


Airship Down and the Mountains of Madness

by KeithBReal



Series: The Madness Cycle [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Enemies to Friends, F/M, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:37:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 60,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1928598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeithBReal/pseuds/KeithBReal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sokka, wanting to hit the Fire Nation back for what they did to Aang at Ba Sing Se, takes down one of their prototype airships over the south pole. Problem is he takes himself down with it, and finds himself stranded in the middle of a frozen wasteland with his least favorite person, Princess Azula. Starvation and cold eventually become the least of their worries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Part I: Airship Down.

Chapter One.

The boy lie still on a cot surrounded by low candles and incense. Aside from the slow, steady movements of his chest he was like a corpse, unmoving, and free of the tiny motions made by healthy sleepers. Sokka had seen the Avatar like this before, when his spirit had left his body for another world.

"See you later, buddy," he said knowing wherever Aang was he could not hear. "I'll get 'em for ya."

The metal hinged door to Aang's room closed with a creak and he left the stifling air of the ship's lower portion. On the ship's deck the air was warm and made him feel uncomfortable in his furs. He took the outer layer off, not wanting to work up a sweat so soon before leaving for colder climates.

Men in Fire Nation uniforms patrolled the deck as he moved towards a large red cloth that had been stretched over a lumpy shape that grunted every so often. From behind it stepped a dark-skinned girl with eyes the color of sea ice. "You know this is stupid, right?" his sister, Katara, said.

"That's what everyone keeps telling me," he replied. This argument had already been played out and Katara had lost.

She crossed her arms as a gust of wind tossed her hair loops over her face. She reminded him of their mother.

"Well, maybe you should listen," said Katara.

He knelt near the large cloth covering Appa, the sky bison, and double checked to make sure he had everything with him he would need. Once the cloth was off Appa's back he would have to go immediately as real Fire Nation ships were still patrolling the waters.

"This has to be done," Sokka said, repeating his old arguments. "We have to know more about what we're going to be up against when we strike back."

"This goes against everything we talked about," Katara said. "They think Aang is...dead. Let them think we're beaten, too."

"They won't even know I'm there," said Sokka,

The ship they were on which they had highjacked had contained valuable information about the Fire Nation's future plans. There had been logs and missives indicating that the military's researchers had taken the concept behind the war balloon and expanded it, building a larger version more suited to warfare.

Hundreds of feet long, kept aloft by heated gas, the things were flying battle ships capable of dropping explosives over targets and giving firebenders a platform on which to attack from the air. A prototype was scheduled to be flying near the South Pole within the next two weeks and Sokka had convinced everyone he was going to spy on it and learn it's true capabilities. What he had not said was that he intended to see it on the ground and in flames before the week was out. He hoped no one had taken too close a look at the supplies he had packed as there wasn't much blasting jelly had to do with a scouting trip.

"So you're off, then?" said his father, Hakoda, who came around behind Katara. He took off the Fire Nation helmet he wore and smiled before his eyes dipped to his daughter and sadness tinted his features.

"If you'll excuse me," Katara said, her face hardening without looking at her father. She walked away.

"Yeah," Sokka said, now truly doubting the wisdom of his plan. "Should take me a week to get there if the weather holds out and nothing happens. Appa's been taking it easy so he should be fine."

"And assuming they stick to the schedule we found. Things like that change, you know."

He sighed, wishing someone would try to talk him into doing this. "If there were more details in the notes we found, I'd stay, but we have to see what these things can really do or if it's just wishful thinking on their part."

"I trust you're judgment," said Hakoda. "But I took the liberty of packing the blasting jelly a little tighter. You don't want to jiggle it." He said the last in a low voice, without moving his lips much.

Sokka turned red but felt better. "Thanks. I won't take any chances, promise."

His father smiled and patted his shoulder. He signaled for some men to lift the cloth covering Appa and Sokka climbed into Appa's saddle where the rest of his provisions were packed. He took the reigns and said "Yip-yip!" telling Appa to go skyward. The bison did so with a groan, and was sluggish in gaining altitude.

"We'll see Aang soon, big guy," Sokka said. "Let's go give the Fire Nation some payback."

-000-

Two days into his journey and Sokka began to think Appa was not going to get over his funk. He knew it was being so far from Aang while he was hurt that was causing it, and while Sokka almost thought the bison understood what was going on, no soothing words from Sokka seemed to help. Even so they made better time than Sokka had anticipated. Bruise colored thunderheads seemed to keep their distance like packs of polar bear dogs and the clouds to the south took on a yellow-pink tinge. The air blowing around him slowly sharpened itself making him draw up his hood closer to the evening hours when it grew colder.

He and Appa reached the frozen south lands a day early and Sokka considered making a bid for his home village but decided it was too far. He brought Appa down to set on an iceberg where he ate his fill of rations, fed Appa, and rolled a map of the polar region over the bison's saddle. He'd brought the notes discovered on the ship and began double checking the airship's planned route. He knew this was to be a test of how the machine worked in cold weather and at high altitudes. To that end it intended to fly over a high mountain range almost at the south pole itself.

He spent that afternoon re-reading the schematics he had brought with them. They were the originals and he had been thinking bringing them was a mistake until he noticed something he had not seen before. Scrawled in light markings on one of the margins was a note. "More armor on top. Air attacks not ruled out."

"Perfect," Sokka muttered, trying to find some indication of how thick the armor plating on the top of the balloon really was. Perhaps they had never been able to implement that design feature. Sokka shook his head, remembering they still did not know who these plans had belonged to or what they were doing aboard that particular ship.

His plan had been to fly above the airship and drop a few loads of blasting jelly onto it. As reckless one-man attack plans went he thought it was pretty safe, especially as the Fire Nation would not be expecting it. He took a swig from a canteen as Appa grunted, and studied the plans harder, thinking about how he would armor a balloon fearing it would be attacked from above.

By the time night crept over the ice he had several plans memorized, one for each situation he could think of and all being solved with application of more blasting jelly, perhaps more directly by landing on the top of the airship itself and packing it in. He had brought extra jelly and went to sleep knowing that he was many things, prepared being one of them.

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two.

Azula had made a grave miscalculation.

One would think flying thousands of feet above a frozen, unexplored wasteland inhabited by savages and monsters would have been fun, but it was anything but. It was nothing more than men running about checking valves, rudders, and gas levels. Those not busy with that were bent over maps and fretting over weather.

To make matters worse Azula had left Ty Lee and Mai, her two friends, back in the Fire Nation. She did not even have her brother to torment. She had left them behind mainly because she wished to be the one to tell them what it was like to fly through the air over the clouds. Ty Lee especially would be curious and would have to be content with whatever Azula decided to tell her.

Leaning over the railing of the battle deck, she doubted she could make the trip out to be exciting. The deck was long and narrow, designed for one or two firebenders to stand out on and rain fire down on enemies and buildings bellow. She had sent a few bolts of blue flame downward, only to watch them fizzle before getting near the ground. As powerful as she was they were up quite high and it took much of her energy to keep from getting frost bitten in the sub-zero wind. That she was even able to stand on the battle deck in the open air dressed as she was had amazed the crew.

She had the urge to spit, to see if it would freeze into an ice pellet, but could not bring herself to commit such a vulgar act. Instead she looked about for some frost to collect and send down, and in so doing spied something on the horizon. Squinting, she thought it might be some sort of bird seal given its size and shape, but as it turned into a wind current and gained altitude she saw it was something else entirely.

A sky bison.

There was only one sky bison in the world and even if there were more it was not likely the others would have a saddle. The how and why could wait, she thought, as she ran to the bridge. "You have a problem," she said to the captain, an old, thin man who had commanded a seaborne vessel prior to this assignment.

"Yes, princess?" he said, barely managing to conceal his insolence.

"Look off to starboard. It's the Avatar on his flying buffalo."

The captain smiled, and she could feel the other crewmen pretending to focus more intently on their work while they watched the interaction from the corners of their eyes.

"The Avatar? Isn't he..."

"Dead? Apparently not. I'm telling you, look!"

The captain waived towards a navigator who didn't look as busy as the others, bidding him to look through a nearby window. Frost had collected on the outside of the glass and while he tried in vain to clear his view, Azula lost her patience. "How do I get to the top of the balloon?" she asked.

"Erm...at this altitude I wouldn't..."

"At this altitude you'll die before you hit the ground after I've thrown you off," Azula said, and was promptly directed towards a hatch near the middle of the ship. Two men were at her back, and helped open the hull where a ladder ran up the side of the balloon.

"Tell the captain to decrease our altitude," Azula said. "Tell him that's an order!"

One of the men left, and before ascending the ladder Azula made it clear what would happen to the other if the hatch closed behind her. He nodded and up she went, her concentration bent on keeping her body warm in the blistering cold as her light clothing offered almost no protection.

It took longer than she thought to gain the top of the balloon. Her warm hands made the frozen rungs slippery, and keeping warm and climbing tired her out as well. -It's nothing,- she thought. -I'm the most powerful firebender in the world, cold is nothing, cold is nothing...-

At the top with the wind pushing her she thought that perhaps she'd let her confidence go too far. There was no sign of the bison and for a moment she became angry at how foolish she would look when she went back in, but that emotion was soon replaced when she saw someone in blue furs kneeling over the top of the balloon working intently at something.

With a wide stance she went forward softly, wanting the element of surprise. "So," she shouted above the wind. "You're alive."

The face that turned to her did not belong to the Avatar. His skin was light brown, his eyes a bright blue. She thought she recognized him, but there would no telling who he was after she burned him and sent him to the ground.

"You!?" he shouted, keeping his face towards her and his body hunkered over what he was doing.

-He's drilling a hole to let the gas escape,- she thought, knowing a similar tactic was used on wooden sea ships. -Fool, the metal is too thick for that. And too thick to be harmed by flame.-

A cold gust made her unsteady on her feet and she decided to end the encounter by sending a long bolt of fire at the boy which would set him aflame and knock him off the balloon to die.

He shouted "No!" before leaping out of the way, surprisingly agile in such thick furs. Azula did not have time to so much as curse in the span of time it took her to realize her fire was going to hit the keg of blasting jelly the Water Tribe boy had been planting.

The explosion was powerful enough to knock her through the air and send her sliding over the top of the balloon, but it was more of a pop compared to what happened next when the gas inside the balloon combusted. She felt her body vibrate enough to make her nauseous as the sides of the balloon blew out. That was quickly followed by a great wave of rolling metal and canvass that sent another wave of force through her, tearing away her ability to think and perceive the world around her.

She woke cold and weightless in a world of white. When she realized she was falling, she put all her effort into making an educated guess as to what direction the ground was in and pointed her feet towards it. She then forced flames out through her hands and feet using the resulting thrust to fight against gravity. The flames pushed against the tremendous force pulling her down and Azula gritted her teeth, knowing the deep cold had sapped much of her bending strength and that she might not have enough to slow herself enough in time.

Her focus gave way to fury, as it became clear the elements and gravity would have their way. When she came to a stop she was aware of two things, one was that the leg she favored on the way down had snapped and the other was that the falling airship was close. The world of white now was a world of heat and sound. Groaning metal, snapping beams, and the popping of flames roared over the snow which was all around her and keeping her from moving away.

The bending of metal could no longer be heard only the hiss of fire on snow and the crackling sound it made as it consumed wood and fabric. Azula thought she could hear screams under the din but now the pain in her leg was the only thing she knew. It was her left leg and she felt for where it had broken. She cried out when her hand found the bone protruding from her shin, and now the pain hit her in a great wash blotting out all other concerns.

When the pain had dulled, she could feel the cold creeping in. Half buried in wet, slushy snow she could still hear the fire from the airship burning somewhere to her left, and picked her head up to look. She went back down, having jostled her leg in the process, and tried to refocus on keeping herself warm and not vomiting.

Everything had happened too quickly for her to make sense of it. After her fire attack it felt like she had lived a million years in the span of a few seconds. She now found herself in a dark place with cold all around her. She could keep it at bay but the pain in her leg and weariness she felt would not let her gain any ground on it, and it was all she could do to keep her mind on not freezing. -Just wait,- she thought, holding onto it like a rope thrown to a drowning woman. -Just wait, stay warm, maybe someone else survived.-

To be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three.

Sokka trudged towards the smoldering wreckage of the airship. He was blowing cones of steam from his mouth, moving his head around and trying to twist the cone into a shape. He had to be an airbender, that was the only logical explanation for how he had not died from the fall. How he survived the blast itself was another mystery. If not for his foggy breath he would have said he was a ghost.

He looked back to see the large snow drift he had landed in which was now melting from the heat of airship's flames. He saw the hole where he had dug his way out and thought if he had fallen in through the top perhaps it could have cushioned his fall, but he wasn't convinced.

Shivering he continued on towards the wreckage hoping Appa would soon circle over and pick him up. In the meantime he only had eyes for the dying fires of the airship which would keep him warm while he waited.

As he drew closer this idea seemed less appealing. Unless everyone else had shared his luck there were apt to be corpses and wounded men, not to mention survivors who would not be happy to see him. He didn't see anyone up and moving around and told himself he didn't have to save any wounded he encountered. -Remember what they did to mom,- he thought, trying to remember his tears from back then and not the woman herself.

He nearly tripped over the first body. It lie face down in the snow and was stiff, like the body of a tiger-seal left outside an igloo. How long had he been buried, he wondered? The fires did look a low for a fresh crash. Sokka stepped around the corpse and soon found more, some face up. The snow had not been deep enough to save them from the impact and try as he might to look away from their broken bodies he could not. The ones that had been burnt were somehow the easiest to face, their human features mostly having been turned black and shriveled off. They were not better to smell, however, and he nearly wretched when the wind shifted.

"Come on, Appa," he said, looking up. There was no sign of the sky bison and a pit formed in his stomach. If he was dead then Sokka felt he might as well sit and freeze to death. -Like Katara won't kill me, anyway,- he thought, and moved towards part of the balloon that was still on fire.

It had broken in half when it fell and landed to make a V shape on a slope, with the point of the V facing upward. There were more bodies here and the snow had melted significantly. He noticed much of the balloon had sunk downward leaving less than half of it above the snowline. -Guess it either cooled or it hit bedrock,- he thought always having wondered just how far the snow and ice went down. It could not have too far, as amid the hillocks of snow had been gray streaks signifying stone.

It was warm between the two sections of airship but black, acrid smoke had collected there and drove him back. "I don't need a fire," he muttered. "I just need Appa. Appa! Where are you!?" he shouted to the sky.

He continued to shout as he walked away from the wreckage, now keenly aware of the miles of snowy landscape between him and the sea which he'd flown over easily on Appa's back. The sky was becoming dim turning toward a shade of purple and while it would not be dark for another few months yet, the arctic "night," would bring even worse cold which he was now ill-equipped to deal with.

He decided he would move a few hundred more yards away from the wreckage so Appa could better see him then turn back if the bison didn't arrive. He started to think there would be supplies in the airship, protected by the hull from the rest of the burning wreckage and perhaps a firebender who was willing to be reasonable.

He was close to turning around when he fell forward into something soft that shrieked and clawed at him. Rolling off it he saw the colors of a Fire Nation uniform over the slender form of a girl. "Oaf!" she cried, and swatted at his face.

The slap hurt as his cheek was cold and he scooted back as far as the snowy pit she'd melted out for herself would let him. He felt water seeping in through his furs, and got his feet under him so as not to be soaked. "Ow, stop that," he said, blocking half-hearted blows. The girl seemed unable to move much or at least it pained her when she did.

She stopped moving and he heard her take a deep breath. Suddenly there was a blue flame in the pit with them and he saw it was coming from her hand.

"Azula!" he shouted, jumping back ready for the flame to come at his face.

The fire went out. "Ugh," she said. "It's you. How is it you're alive and uninjured?"

He could only make out the color of her clothing and general outline of her body in the gloom but he could tell where he head was and so he drew his boomerang. -Come on, Sokka, you can do it. One whack and it's all over with. One...one...-

She was shifting her position now and it sounded as though she were in pain. She pushed with one leg against the icy slush at the bottom of the snow crater and pressed her back to the far wall. Her hand came aflame again, only it was dimmer, and flickered with her breath. "I see that stick in your hand," she said. "Do it if you're going to do it, and let's get this over with."

She could be pretending he thought, but doubted it. Someone like Azula wouldn't need to fake an injury to beat him and if she was pretending she was doing a good job of it. He felt the weight of his boomerang in his hand and imagined what splitting her skull would be like. There'd be a pop sound, and droplets of blood spatter on his clothes and face. She would probably twitch on the ground like a clubbed tiger-seal before dying.

"Why don't you just sit there and be quiet," he said not relaxing his grip on his weapon but abandoning thoughts of attacking first.

Her flame went out and he heard her sigh. "Are you thinking it will be easier if I'm asleep? Maybe if I don't struggle, or make a sound? It won't. It's not like clubbing a seal...not that I'd know what that's like."

"Be quiet and save your energy," Sokka said.

She laughed. "My leg is broken and it's beyond freezing. It's all I can do keep warm with my bending but that takes concentration, something I won't have when I sleep."

He took off a mitten and felt the air. It was warm in the pit, closer to the air during spring ice-out than the lung-freezing temperatures beyond the range of the airship fire. "Is that..."

"Me? Yes, what little energy I have left is keeping us both nice and toasty," she said, settling herself into the side of the snow cave.

"How long can yo keep it up?" he asked.

Her breathing sounded labored and she had to take several breaths before she could speak again. "An hour. No more."

"I've got a nice warm coat," Sokka said. "And I can head to the wreckage and take cover there or build a fire with the debris."

"Good for you," she said. "So you get to watch me freeze to death, then? Too bad you can't kill me yourself like a man."

Sokka laughed although he wasn't feeling funny. He liked that Azula was suffering and felt sick because of it. "I got a better idea," he said. "I'd be pretty stupid to pass up the chance to capture a Fire Nation princess wouldn't I? Naw, I think I'll find a way to keep you warm and get you out of this hole and hopefully onto Appa. Unless you really want to die out here?"

Azula said nothing and for a moment he thought she'd lost consciousness. He started to move towards her when she chuckled. "Do as you will," she said. "But make it quick, I wasn't joking about not being able to keep by body temperature up for much longer."

To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four.

Azula didn't know when she'd lost consciousness but her mother told her when she was dreaming.

The woman stood as Azula remembered her, in her fine silk robes with her golden hairpiece. Her face had always held a soft, sad expression but Azula saw it was heavier with worry as the wind off the snowfield tore around her, not moving her hair or clothes in the slightest.

She was far away then close. Azula felt cold and saw she was lying in the snow at her mother's feet. She reached up but her mother didn't take her hand. The expression of worry on her face seemed to deepen into fear and her eyes bent towards the mountains to the east but she seemed reluctant to turn her head in that direction.

The mountains were cast in shadow on the west side, making them look like empty space rather than towering irregular crags. They were ominous looking but Azula could see no reason to fear them. They seemed to pulse in her hears and when the wind took a turn, blowing from the mountains, she felt a trace of heat which seemed scalding when compared to the bone-numbing chill she felt all over.

Azula began to crawl, wanting to be wrapped in the heat of the mountains but suddenly her mother was on her, weighing her down. Azula struggled but the pain in her leg made any artful attempt to get free impossible. Her mother began to shake her and Azula shouted.

"Hey! Hey, wake up. Come on, we need to move."

It was the Water Tribe savage and she was now awake.

He was making a show of moving ice and snow piles around, waiting for her to come to full consciousness. She took her time and tried to remember details of the dream. All she could remember was the pulsing, warm mountains.

"Where are we going? Weren't you supposed to make a fire here?"

"No," Sokka said. "We need to get to the airship wreckage and we needed to get their half an hour ago. There's a blizzard coming from the west and we're frozen meat if we can't get under better cover."

Azula tied to move, but her entire body felt like it was made of wet clay. Sleep started to slip over her like a cowl and she shook her head. "I told you if I'm awake I can keep myself warm. And you too, I suppose."

"This isn't going to be a few light flakes like you get sometimes near the equator, this is a real south pole blizzard we're talking about. We need to go, now."

While a savage, she figured he knew something of cold weather life and he sounded serious, so she nodded. "Very well. Help me rise."

After neither moved for a moment Sokka came forward just as she slid down the small slope away from the wall, giving him room to get behind her and lift her by the underarms. She put all her weight on her good leg but when the broken one had pressure put on it from rising she screamed, not expecting it to hurt as bad as it did.

Sokka nearly dropped her but was able to control her return to the ground causing another scream. Azula felt tears in her eyes and later would wonder if she hadn't somehow waterbent them back.

Sokka swore and began muttering. She thought he said something about having known better but the pain in her leg was all she could think about and it left her winded. It hurt worse now than before and with the pain came the realization as to how much trouble she was really in.

Had she been alone she might have cried but with a savage nearby she refused. Azula, Princess of Fire, didn't cry in despair and that was that, she thought, over and over again as the Water Tribesman climbed up out of the snow hole and after a while returned with what Azula thought he should have had in the first place: A sled made from broken airship parts.

It was two long poles fastened at one end then spread out to make a V shape with trusses in the gap between. "I wanted to get you up and out, then onto this but I guess I can drag you up, too," he said, setting it next to her.

She braced for more pain and managed only a few whimpers as he helped her shuffle into it. Using her arms, she helped him as best she could while he struggled to drag her out of the hole. It was an effort and twice she thought she'd be left to slide back down into a world of pain but like a polar dog, Sokka pulled her up and onto the snowfield.

Azula looked west and saw Sokka was right about the snowstorm. A rolling wall of black was on the horizon and she could see it churning in their direction. It was cold outside the hole, and she began to shiver, feeling small and weak before the coming storm. "Go, go!" she shouted, hearing Sokka pant.

He groaned and dragged her towards the wrecked airship. She hoped he had already scouted a way into its interior as the snowstorm would likely be on them as soon as they reached the crash site. It was on them before that. The wind hit her face first and less than a minute later was followed by sharp, stinging snowflakes. The tribal was in front of one of the ship's sections and stopped in front of an opening.

"This is going to hurt," he said, and lifted her by the arms again.

And hurt it did. She ground her teeth to keep from crying out or struggling, not wanting him to drop her and make the process longer. She didn't remember how she got inside the ship or what came after only that her leg seemed to hate her.

They were in a corridor that the crash had tilted at an angle. One end was partially blocked and the other led into a dark area. Azula could hear the wind outside and while the corridor was warmer than outdoors it wasn't by much. With her thin clothing she couldn't help but shiver on the cold, metal surface.

Sokka had gone into the dark but came back after a short time. "I can't find wood for a fire. Everything is made of metal and I can't see my hand in front of my face when I go in there," he said.

She didn't speak, trying to concentrate and let her body heat build. She felt sleepier than she'd ever been and the only other things she felt were cold and pain. "I-I can't," she said, her teeth chattering.

"Can't...firebend?"

"N-no," she said. "It's t-too c-c-cold."

"It is a bit nippy," Sokka said, and she heard him sit against the wall. Or maybe it was the floor, she couldn't tell in the dark. The wind was beating on the hull outside, and she felt as though she were still out there being cocooned by the ice as though it were a spider and she a bug in its web. Sleepiness was now was the only thing she could feel. Pain and cold were far away and now came the warm pulsing of the mountains to the east.

"Hey," Sokka said, touching her arm. "Don't freak out, but you're going to die if I don't do this."

She felt him tugging at her damp, frozen clothes, trying to find where they fastened together so he could undo them. The fuzzy cowl that had overtaken her began to slip back and she groaned, wanting to scratch his skin off and burn him. While her mind raged her body had been taken to its limit and she lay like a dead tiger-seal while he disrobed her, leaving her pants. She heard him move about, taking off his own clothes.

He pressed against her and covered them with something soft and warm. His body felt like it was made from hot coals but they brought no pain and no longer caring about where she was she pressed against him.

"Trust me, this a tried and true anti-freezing-to-death technique," Sokka said. "I hate it, too."

Azula could now feel the difference between being sleepy and dying and realized she had been working on the latter. As she warmed up she was able to feel disgust once more but was too tired to deal with it and decided being unconscious was the best way to get it over with.

To be continued...


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five.

As he felt Azula inadvertently nuzzle his chest in her sleep, he began to compose in his head the Legend of Sokka. -Bravely he flew to the south pole to blow up a Fire Nation super weapon and...ended up cuddling with the worst person in the world after almost dying. Very nice. Story of my life...-

He reminded himself that he was not cuddling with her at all and was just keeping her alive. That's what good guys did, right? Yes, he told himself, awkwardly twisting his body so his hip was against her, not his groin. He was a gentleman above all things.

When she woke he expected her to strike at him but she only moved a few inches away. The air beneath his big coat was warm now, and he almost dreaded having to leave it. He hoped there was food, water, and a place to pee somewhere on board, as the storm was still blowing outside.

"Enjoying yourself?" she asked, having brushed against his groin when she moved.

He felt his cheeks flush but his tongue was still sharp. "It got like that when I thought you were going to freeze to death so don't flatter yourself," he said.

"Let me guess, you must be the funny one," she said.

"I'm the smart, tough one, too," he said. "I'm going to go look around for food and water and maybe some thicker clothes for you."

It took him some time to find his own clothes in the dark but once he was dressed he rolled from under his big coat and felt the cold clamp around his skin. Growing up in a frozen land Sokka's idea of cold was different than that of those who lived in warmer climates but he had to admit they were in a different league all together now, far south of where his people dared to tread. -I'll have to tell Gran Gran,- he thought, noticing his eyes had acclimated to the dark well enough for him to make a better search of the room at the end of the tilted hall.

The cold made him realize he would have to guide his search as he did not have time to go plodding over every inch he could reach. He determined that this room wasn't likely to hold anything of value so he moved into the next, hugging the left wall so he'd be able to find his way back in the dark.

The smell of burnt wood and cloth permeated the air the deeper in he went and some rooms and halls were choked with smoke, forcing him to crawl low where he could breath. He searched two rooms, which he guessed had to have been officer's quarters and found some sweet pastries, hard candy, and a tin of biscuits. He found a set of clothes, too, which he guessed would be too big for Azula to wear comfortably but they would keep her warm. He found a cup he could melt water in and took a blanket, thinking he'd use it to carry his loot back and block the opening he'd come into the ship by to keep the cold out and what heat they could must in.

When he stumbled over a body he thought it made a sound. After checking, he realized it was stiff from either death or the cold and didn't like the fact that he was glad over it. -Come on, Sokka,- he thought. -What did you think was going to happen, that they'd all go home on sleds?-

He still could not fathom why he was alive and these men were all dead. He guessed Azula had used some firebending trick to slow her descent, but nothing accounted for him that he could remember. He decided not to let it ruin is concentration while he made his way back to Azula.

"I got some food," he said," returning to where Azula had covered her head beneath his coat.

"Water," she said.

"Coming right up," he said, with false cheer emptying the blanket and giving her a piece of hard candy. He went to the door which was down the hall some distance and braced himself for the cold. The beating wind had slowed but was still steady. He ate some snow and packed the cup as tight as he could before going back inside and fixing the blanket over the opening. Returning to where Azula lay, he handed her the cup of snow and she was able to muster enough heat to melt it and gulp it all down. "You should have fetched two," she said, handing the cup back to him.

He made a few more trips for snow, and was able to get a few drinks while Azula ate a little over half the food he'd found. With her leg broken he didn't begrudge her that. When they'd eaten the food, Sokka gave her the top half of the uniform he'd found and helped her put it on over her old clothes which helped her fill them out better and would be warmer.

"We'll need more food," Azula said. "I'm sure there's more if you look."

"I'll get right on it," said Sokka, rolling his eyes. "I'm not sure what the point will be if we don't think of a way out of here."

He couldn't see her face in the dark but sensed she had reached the same conclusion he had. With their pressing needs met they'd both had time to contemplate the depth of the trouble they were in.

"Do you think the flying buffalo is dead?" Azula said.

"No!" Sokka snapped. "I mean, he was nowhere near the airship when you blew it up. He's just lost in the storm."

"When I blew it up? You're responsible for all of this don't forget."

"You're one to talk about responsibility," Sokka said. "Your people started this entire war, so don't act surprised when people fight back."

"I'm not going to waste my breath explaining to a savage the justness of our cause so let's talk about something else. Let's assume the bison isn't coming, and it will be days before anyone thinks to come looking for us, and then longer for them to get down here in another airship."

"How long?" Sokka said. "There's only two of us and this ship had supplies for better than fifty people. We can wait it out."

"That's assuming we can reach those supplies, and they weren't destroyed. If you bring me a lantern after your next little journey I can light it for you so you can look better."

"I'll go in a minute. I'm tired too, you know. How's your leg?"

"Still broken," she said. "I think you made it bleed."

A tiny blue flame flickered up from her fingertip, casting them in its light. She held it over her leg, so Sokka could see it.

There was congealed blood over where the shin bone had come through the skin. The flesh around it had swollen and in the blue light he tried to see if it was infected. Cold could slow an infection but not prevent it, he knew. "My sister would know what to do," he said. "I can try to make a splint for it which would keep it from hurting you so bad when you move."

Azula looked at the wound for a long moment and groaned. "It's going to need more than that," she said. "The wound needs to be cleaned, bandaged, and if we're staying as long as we might be, the bone needs to be set."

"Yeah," said Sokka, squinting, thinking there wasn't as much bone showing as he previously thought. "I dunno. We had a kid break his leg like that in my village once. Katara and Gran Gran fixed it, but it took them a while. I think Gran Gran was worried the bone would cut an artery, or something."

"Well your Gran Gran isn't here and if my leg gets infected, I'm dead, and if the bone heals crooked, I'm a cripple, so why don't you have another biscuit, a drink, and go find something you can pass off as medical equipment."

Sokka got up, a calmness having come over him. "You know, if we're low on food I can think of one way to double my rations."

"You tried the tough guy act once already and it failed," she said.

"Starvation does funny things to people," Sokka said. "If I were you I wouldn't make it any easier for me to do what I might be forced to, know what I mean?"

"I'll be nice if you stop talking," she said, and let her flame go out.

He felt himself deflate. "Fine, but remember, one way or another I'm getting back to my family and if that means forgetting you, then that's how it'll be."

He heard her snort as he walked down the hall towards the dark room he'd gone though before, now in search of more supplies and a lantern.

To be continued...


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six.

Azula had spent the past two hours meditating, preparing for what was to come. Moving into the position she now occupied, with her back against the cold metal wall, had given her a small sampling of the pain she would have to endure and now hoped to leave her body entirely for a time.

The Water Tribe boy was making for a fine servant and she had told him as much thinking the compliment would help his mood but it only seemed to agitate him further. -It's that pride streak of theirs that keeps them savage,- she thought. -No matter, can't let it cloud my mind.-

He located more food, some pots for holding water (Including a bedpan for less savory liquids that needed to be dealt with) and more importantly, a doctor's bag. Azula knew more about medicine in theory but Sokka had her beat in experience. The dynamic made him an excellent receptacle for her knowledge and after some discussion she was confident he could carry out her instructions and not make a mess of her wound.

"It's time," she said, opening her eyes.

"Are you sure?" he asked, sitting across from her.

"Conditions for it won't improve," she said, putting a lump of cloth between her teeth.

The doctor's bag had everything they needed to clean her wound, set the bone, and wrap it to heal. What it lacked was any kind of anesthetic and Azula theorized the doctor had been using it in his leisure time. Azula knew the procedure might have to be done again by a professional later, but there was no point in thinking about that now.

"Alright, here it goes," he said.

If the meditating had helped she didn't know it. Her teeth tightened around the cloth, her hands balled into fists, and her eyes shut tight as her lips peeled back. She began to shake and couldn't hold back a rattling, muffled, scream.

She sensed he was holding back and spit the rag out. "Just get it done, quickly!" she shrieked, and he continued cleaning the old blood from the wound, scraping it with a tool and getting the rest with a cloth. The water they'd boiled was still hot and she felt her head bang against the wall when he poured it over her leg.

Her only reprieve came when he rubbed salve over the wound. It had a strong mint smell and tingled. "Deeper," she said through clenched teeth, knowing the greenish substance would keep infection out but only if it was put on right. "Get the bandage and splint ready."

He had both nearby, and his fingers probed the area around the wound, above and bellow. "Alright," he said. "When you're ready."

She let a few seconds go by before deciding she would never be ready. Putting the rag back in her mouth, she mumbled "Go."

He tugged on her leg and pushed down on the part of the bone that protruded. She spit the rag out and screamed, tears now freely coming down her face which she covered with her hands. She didn't know how long she sat there in agony before he spoke. "Uh, it didn't go right. One more should do it."

She looked at her leg, and could still see the bone in the soft light of the lantern. It wasn't out as much as before, and she could see where it wasn't straight. "Do it," she said, weakly.

"Are you..."

"Just do it," she croaked, unable to scream.

She felt him tug and saw the lantern light disappear. Darkness rolled over her and she fell backward through the wall and out into the snow. The wind blew but it was a low, calm wind, bearing small flakes. The mountains to the east were closer now, pulsing louder with heat. Her mother was nowhere to be seen and Azula kept her eyes on the mountains thinking maybe she had gone there. Something was there, waiting, pulsing and warm.

When she woke up her mouth tasted like vomit and she was wearing a different uniform top, this one thicker than the other, with red fur lining. She moaned and looked around for water which was handed to her from the shadows.

"You blacked out but I think we nailed it."

"What's off to the east?" she asked after a moment.

"Huh? Uh, some mountains. Big ones. Why?"

"Just thought I'd ask. How long was I out?"

"A few hours. You came to once, then went to sleep for a while. A wound that bad is going to drain you."

"Clearly," she said, picking her head up to see her leg. The bandage was tight and the splint he'd fashioned kept her leg straight and immobilized. The swelling had gone down, too. "Good work," she said.

"You're welcome. I'm gonna take a nap and then go looking for more stuff. Maybe in the other part of the ship, but I'll have to go outside. You'll be okay on your own?"

"Oh, please don't leave," she said, holding her the back of her hand to her forehead. "I'll be fine. Safer than you, likely. Don't get yourself trapped or some nonsense, I won't be able to save you."

She put the lantern out and covering herself as best she could, tried to go back to sleep. Her memory of the mountains was clearer now and she wondered why she could not stop thinking about them. The general impression was still the same, imposing heights, deep shadows, heat, and pulsing. She evened out her breathing and focused on the thought letting herself sink into it. While the mountains were high, she got the impression their immensity and pulsing warmth came from the bottom or lower where the shadows were deepest.

Not shadows, she thought. Darkness. It was like they swallowed or repelled all light. Then there was the pulsing which the more she thought about it seemed like the beating of a drum, a sound that could be felt as much as heard. And hadn't the heat come in time with the pulsing? Had it not tinged that inky blackness with red? The ache in her leg made her unable to think about it more.

"Are you alright?" Sokka asked.

"Shouldn't you be napping?" she said and clicked her tongue. "When you go outside look to the east and tell me if you see anything strange about the mountains."

"Oookay," Sokka said. "Anything special about them I should be looking for?"

She curled her lips inward and squinted before speaking. "They're a landmark. If we have to leave on our own we'll need to know which way to go."

He didn't believe her. "I'll look, if you want," he said. "Maybe it will help with your nightmares."

"My nightmares? I don't know what you're talking about."

"I had to hold you still when you started shaking," he said. "You said something about mountains and your mother."

"Shut up!" she shouted, anger splashing over her like water tossed from a bucket. "You...you..."

"Just calm down," Sokka said, raising his hands. "I'll have a look at them when I go out but I already know where we are and how screwed we'll be if we have to walk."

"Given up on the bison, then," she said, feeling calmer as she spoke.

Sokka said nothing for a long moment and she didn't think he would reply. "He might have flown north after the explosion and lost his way back in the storm, I don't know. He's an animal but he's...you wouldn't understand. Either way if he's dead then so are we and I don't have to face anyone over it. I'll go see about your stupid mountains."

He left and Azula found herself hoping the bison was alive

To be continued...


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven.

He willfully ignored the mountains to the east and looked into the gray swirling sky for Appa. He could almost feel the sense of relief and elation that would flood him at first sight of the bison. "Come on, big guy, come and save Sokka," he said, knowing he would be obliged to worship the beast as a god once he was rescued.

He reached the other half of the airship and began to walk around it looking for an entrance while still hoping he would see the bison. Sokka had to keep his head down the closer he came to the crash as there were more stiff bodies in the snow. As he stepped around them his mind quietly informed him that because they were frozen the meat would not rot. -Don't go there,- he thought, hoping whatever spirits ruled this lonely place would not test his will to live so severely.

The black wreckage held white snow in its cold folds and gaps. Sokka could not smell smoke, only the flat odor of char and the ship appeared dead and still like the bodies of the men around it. Rather than invite investigation, the dark hollow places where snow had not fallen looked outward like eyes on a skull. He circled the wreck two times which took over an hour given the waist high powdery snow which covered the back side of the wreck. The V-shaped middle area was not much better as it was a foot of powder over ice.

He focused on the area where the ship had broken in half and using a broken pole he was able to pry up a loose flap of metal that let him crawl into a collapsed passage. Inside were more bodies, again making him wonder how he and Azula were alive. -Guess it didn't pay to go down with the ship,- he thought, seeing that most had been crushed by the collapsing metal around them or burned. -Maybe I am dead and nursing Azula in the afterlife is my punishment.-

Using a flint he lighted a torch he had fashioned beforehand and moved over more mangled bodies down a hallway that was partially collapsed and tilted to one side. It smelled of stale smoke and he covered his mouth when he passed the body of a young Fire Nation soldier. The steel walls and ceiling had not been kind to his slender frame and Sokka stepped over him hoping he would find another way back out of the wreckage.

This half of the ship was also in disarray. Beds were overturned, furniture was scattered, desks had been cleared off and their drawers emptied. The chaos almost seemed deliberate in how thorough it was. He found snacks the crew had stashed in their quarters but nothing like a pantry or ration warehouse. Many rooms were so disheveled he could not identify their purpose.

"Ah," he said, coming to what had to be the airship's bridge. It had listed to one side, piling all the loose items in the room to one end where they obscured the bodies of the crew. One thing that had not been sent flying was the gas lamps a few of which still worked and he lighted with his torch.

It was cold on the bridge and he could see where the glass windows on one end had shattered and let snow in. There were men on top of it dead and frozen, stretched as though they had tried to dig their way out. He could smell smoke still but could not see it and wished he would come across something useful soon, anything to keep from thinking about the suffering and death he had caused.

His search became aimless. The debris was so scattered it would take hours to sort out anything useful from the junk. Sokka felt like he was taking too much time now but found he did not want to go back and see Azula for a while. As he meandered, his mind wandered to what he might do with her should he succeed in getting her captured. Negotiate a peace perhaps or at least get the Fire Nation out of Ba Sing Se. The logistics were making him light headed or so he thought until he saw the sconces he had lit were dimming. "I'm burning up all the air," he muttered. "Time to go."

On his way out he caught a glance at a piece of paper lying crumpled beneath a desk with one edge sticking out. The grid pattern drawn onto it had caught his eye and he freed it without tearing it. He saw it was a map and folded it crudely before going out the way he came, trying not to look at the mangled body with the frozen blood. Once outside the wind picked up and made his skin tighten as it kicked snow over fresh drifts and dunes.

He trudged back to the other half of the airship trying to think about what Azula might say to him so he could compose witty retorts. Back in the hallway that was their makeshift home he doused his torch and took the lamp from Azula's side to set next to himself so he could read the map.

"Did you find anything to eat?" she asked. She had been meditating and the air was warm.

"A map," he said. "But not a very detailed one it looks like."

"There's nothing in the south to detail," she said. "But tell that to a cartographer."

"What would help us more is a map of the ship. How well do you remember it?"

"Well enough," she said.

"Where did they keep the food?"

"I don't know. I had my meals brought to me."

"Of course you did," he said, loudly and kicked the wall. The sudden burst of frustration surprised him. "Well I know the bridge is in that half over there, so..."

"Then the food would have been stored on this side," she said. "The furnace room, which regulated the gas in the balloon, was in the center but closer to the bridge so orders could be more easily transmitted there. Now if you want to preserve food you would keep it in a cool, dry, place not near a furnace room I should think."

He let a sigh go whooshing out of him. He supposed such information was helpful but he had already searched this end of the ship as far as the wreckage would let him which was why he had braved the deep snow outside to search the other half to begin with. He snapped his fingers. "I haven't tried from outside this half yet," he said. "I can't get any further from in here, but maybe there's a hole torn open outside."

"Go then, time is wasting," said Azula. "Did you see the mountains?"

"No," he said, leaning back and crossing his arms.

She scowled. "I would think they're hard to miss, but perhaps you can consult your map next time you go out."

He snatched up the map and looked at it. The light was dim and his only goal in looking was to annoy Azula but all the same he saw something interesting. "Looks like on the other side of the mountain is an ice flow. Weird."

"Weird? Why? Why is that weird, tell me."

He said nothing and wondered what was so fascinating about these mountains. He had been thinking stress was making Azula loopy, but now he wasn't sure. "Well," he said. "I guess it's not so weird...but it is. I mean, this place hasn't seen spring in a thousand years. It should all be frozen solid all the time, but your mapmakers seemed to think there was an ice flow on the other side leading to the northern coast."

"Well then that's true," she said. "It might interest you to know that the Fire Nation has explored many parts of the globe, including the south pole. Clearly one of our ice breakers traveled the length of the flow."

"Or they read it off an Air Nomad map," Sokka said. "See, they named it Fushi. Doesn't sound like a Fire Nation name to me. Map's probably a draft and they hadn't Fire-ized it yet."

She seemed about to raise an argument, but curled her lip. "Aside from the unfortunate name, why is it strange?" Azula asked.

"Apart from it existing, you mean? Well, that's it. It shouldn't be there. Maybe warm air from the east gets caught behind the mountain range and it's not so cold all year round but that would have to be some serious warm wind blowing off what I know is a cold sea."

"Assuming you're not mistaken, what else would cause it?" she asked. "Let me see the map."

He tossed the map to her, not wanting to be physically near her. She was like a furnace and if he got close the temptation to remain might be too great. "Of course," she said managing to sound both astounded and indulgent. "It's volcanic. That would explain the heat from the mountain."

"Heat?"

Even under her layers of clothes he could see her body tense up. She did a poor job of pretending to study the map while she mulled something over. "I may as well tell you," she said after a while. "You remember the dreams I've been having? They're about the mountains. I can sense heat coming from them. I think it has to do with by bending ability."

"So? You and the fire under the mountain want to be pals. Great. How does that help us?"

"Fool, I can't keep this place heated forever. Most firebenders wouldn't be able to bend at all in cold like this. If it's warm at the mountain that's one less problem we have to solve."

"Only it's not warm there," Sokka said. "It's an ice-covered mountain. Maybe there's enough lava underground to keep the eastern side a little damp in the warm season but we're stuck on this side without any food."

She let out a tired sigh. "Very well. Continue to search for a way to access the ship's food stores, it's our only chance."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, saluting and getting to his feet. He took the torch with him and went outside, nearly knocking down the cloth door he'd strung up.

"It's 'your highness, not 'ma'am,'" she called after him as he trudged off into the snow.

To be continued...


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight.

The dull colorless walls radiated a cold which pressed in on her, snuffing the heat she was able to must while at the same time pulled it out of her and diluted it. She felt like a candle burning down.

The Water Tribe boy had gone out and returned once before leaving. He had brought a meager amount of food but indicated there might be more where he'd found it. He said something about the pantry being partially accessable and that he intended to open it up more and perhaps connect it to this end. He suggested they move their camp deeper into the ship where it might be warmer. She refused, saying she wasn't going through such an ordeal for a "might be."

But there had been another reason. Being deeper in the ship meant they were staying for a long time, and now every time she slept, which was often, she dreamed of it. The heat, the pulsing, it was all vivid and nagging. The dreams seemed to go on for eternity but she could barely recall them on waking.

This would have been bearable but the mountain plagued her conscious thoughts as well. It was all she could think about for any length of time and it made her want to pull at her hair.

Somehow she knew her salvation was at the mountain. She had heard many stories of powerful firebenders communing with volcanoes and she had always thought it silly spiritualist nonsense, but she had never been one to deny there was a spirit world. -I did bring down the Avatar after all,- she thought. -Perhaps the spirits respect me for it.-

Thinking of the Avatar she remembered where she was and who she was with. She should be plying the Water Tribe boy for information about what had happened to the Avatar, not making awkward conversation with him. He was a fool if he thought she was his prisoner. If anything he was hers unless the bison came back with his friends or the Northern Water Tribe discovered flight in the next week or so.

Which was how long they would last if the boy didn't find them a decent source of food. Nutrition had not been her favorite subject at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls but wilderness survival had, and she'd paid rapt attention to her teacher. Even knowing she deserved only the best in life, the idea of being able to go without had been intriguing. She'd learned that in ideal conditions, with access to water, a human could go many weeks without eating. With a broken leg and having to battle sub-zero temperatures she estimated she had about a week. A week and half if she stuck to these measly rations. She might not die within that time, but she would have deteriorated to the point where chewing or digestion would be impossible even if there was food.

Her eyes were now closed as keeping them open was an effort. She decided she was being generous with her estimate. She decided to pull back her heat bending to just her clothes and the blanket she was under and to forget about trying to warm the air around her. The walls radiated cold like they enjoyed it and she had placed more cloth between her and the back wall to keep it from draining her warmth.

She imagined the rocks within the mountain would be just the opposite and would glow with heat pulled from the molten seas roiling beneath them. If she could only get there perhaps they could reach the other side somehow to that ice flow where perhaps the Water Tribe boy could kill a tiger-seal or something. If her leg could have time to heal and she could bend easily again, rescue or escape would come shortly. She started to think about how to tell the boy how to build a proper sled, finding her thoughts came easier when they were about ways to reach the mountain.

When Sokka returned he carried items in a makeshift sling pouch. He sat down in his usual spot and emptied the pouch before resting his back and head against the wall. Azula looked at the meager pile of rations and forced thoughts of the mountain from her mind as best she could. "Well?" she asked.

He sighed and didn't speak for nearly a minute. When she asked again, he spoke, slowly. "That's it for the food," he said.

"The food you've been able to reach," she said. "You'll have to continue your efforts, otherwise..."

"No, I mean that's it for food. I found what had to be the food supply hold and I found nearly everything burnt and blown to a crisp. There are piles of useless garbage everywhere else in the ship that didn't burn up, but the food somehow did."

She smiled a little at the bitterness in his voice but she felt some of it, too. She looked over the pile of food and guessed that on starvation rations it would last them a week, then the real starving would begin. -One week of food, one week without, and that's the end,- she thought, knowing it would be as long as that before anyone decided to come looking for them.

They sat in silence for a long time. Azula thought she might have gone to sleep her thoughts and dreams being the same it was hard to say. The lamp had burned down and neither made a move to refill the oil or adjust the wick. She heard the boy sigh several times, each one deeper than the last. When they stopped altogether she let a wry smile cross her face. -If he thinks I'm going to be the first one to suggest eating the crew, he's wrong. And he certainly doesn't have the guts.-

And that was her chance. "Alright," she said, now knowing once she reached the mountain the maddening thoughts would stop one way or another. "We'll starve before another airship comes and your buffalo has made it clear he's not showing up any sooner. We have to leave on our own."

"And go where? Oh, let me guess, the mountain! And by 'on our own' of course you mean me dragging you."

Azula thought she could almost see his blue eyes and white teeth glowing in the dark. "If that flow on the other side open you could get food from there," she said.

"Yeah, after I drag you to the mountain, then climb it, I'm sure I'll have no trouble catching...whatever."

"Well then if we're going to stay here we need to eat, and if there's nothing to eat..."

She trailed off but he didn't take the bait. It was early still. There was normal food left. Once it had been gone for a few days then it would be all he would think about. She found herself somewhat looking forward to having cannibalism on the brain as it would distract her from the image of the mountain floating before her.

"Where are you going?" she asked as he got up to leave. The blanket was flapping from the wind outside which blew in when he pulled it aside.

"To take one more look around and see if I can guess how far off that stupid mountain of yours is. Unless we want to hang around and eat firebender jerky I don't see another option but to leave before our food runs out."

She almost laughed. A few of the men had been jerks, hadn't they? Wasn't the Water Tribe boy known for his sense of humor? She hadn't seen much of it so far and was glad to learn her spies were at least somewhat accurate. "Don't be long, I might get hungry and eat your share," she said.

"And I might decide I want my firebender steaks fresh," he said as he left.

She laughed loudly, making her leg twitch and throb. There was something that took her mind off the mountain, pain. She let it throb for a few minutes before she could no longer stand it and tried to fall back asleep.

To be continued...


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine.

Sokka was not one to pray often and doing so made him feel silly even when the only person within eight-hundred miles was asleep in the bowels of a crashed airship. He was on his knees facing the mountain Azula would not stop bringing up in their conversations and in between bouts of half-hearted prayers he tried to see what was so special about the distant dark shape that rose up over the snowfield.

The sun was behind him and when he finished asking the spirits to at least stay out of his way if they wouldn't help he turned around to look at the sickly yellow color the sun made the western clouds. He still hoped to see Appa but mainly wished the bison was safe somewhere, maybe headed back to Aang. Katara and the others would surely come, then.

The hope grew sickly and feeble when he remembered that he had taken the only copy of the stolen plans, including the voyage schedule, with him. Maybe Appa had enough direction sense to lead them back but then why hadn't he come for Sokka sooner? Sokka thought the simplest explanation was Appa was dead but he didn't bother thinking about it. Wounded, maybe, but he had not been that close to the explosion, or had he?

-Quit thinking about it. Bottom line is if he hasn't shown up by now he's not going to, so get over it.-

The snow had covered the ship's wreckage in the time since it had cooled. It now blended in well with the snow and pieces of rock that jutted up at odd angles. Sokka could barely see it from the ground when he was next to it and he hated to think about how it would look from the air. He had considered building some kind of beacon to burn, but knew weather would ruin it and besides they might need to burn something aside from Azula's energy stores in case of a cold snap.

Such a temperature drop was what he truly feared, more than starvation and it was the real reason why he now agreed with Azula that they should leave. He knew they could eat the bodies of the crew if it meant living over dying but if a Deep Cold as his people called it came upon them, no amount of meat in their bellies and hiding under blankets would save them.

He had only experienced Deep Cold a few times in his life and each time the adults in the village had been worried, not letting children remain outside to marvel at how their spit froze into ice crystals before hitting the snowy ground. That alone was not enough to signal a Deep Cold but the adults somehow always knew when it was about to get cold enough for blood to freeze and skin to blacken and blister even under heavy furs.

He thought he could recognize the coming of such temperatures in his village but they were far, far south of the place he called home where sane people did not venture. It was summer now and were he in his village Deep Cold would not be a concern, but the rules were different here he had noticed. The wind shifted differently and the daylight was never-ending, but that wasn't the worst or the most troubling. The area around his village near the sea teemed with life but down here in the cold wastes nothing seemed to live.

"People were not meant to be here," he said to himself.

Inside the airship it was only slightly warmer than outside but that was largely from the lack of wind. He had come to learn the warmth they had enjoyed was mainly from the crash fires and Azula's heat was limited to the immediate area around her. The cold from outside had leeched into the crumbled metal walls and they would never be warm again.

Azula was asleep but her eyes fluttered open when he came close and sat down. Her skin looked paler than usual in the yellow glow of the lantern and there were dark rings under her eyes. She was covered in blankets and uniforms and he lifted them up to look at her leg.

"Time for a bandage change," he said, pulling the doctor's bag closer. He'd found a second smaller one in his travels and had added the contents to this one. Her carefully unwrapped her, noting that her skin was hot to the touch, and set the bandages aside for cleaning. Her wound was a dark red and he picked up the lantern to look for red lines running away from it. He saw none but the leg was clearly swollen and hotter than the rest of her.

"Careful, it hurts," she said, her voice weak.

"It's better than I thought it would be," he said. "Let me put more of that goop on it just in case."

She winced as he applied the minty substance, feeling softly to see how the bone was setting. It hadn't move from what he could tell and once the salve was applied he bandaged her up tight and adjusted the splint. Azula winced throughout the procedure and tilted her head back, covering her face.

"I was thinking maybe we should try to get to your mountain," Sokka said.

She was breathing heavily and fighting back tears but when she spoke her voice was even. "Glad you see things my way. Give me a moment and I'll tell you how to build a proper sled."

"I've got that all figured out," he said, knowing he still had some minor details to work over. "You know, technically I co-invented these airships." He thumped the wall with the back of his hand.

"I could tell from how easily it crashed," she said, closing her eyes.

Sokka clenched his fists and teeth, then got up and went outside. He unsheathed his boomerang and began looking for loose airship parts. There were plenty of the kind he had in mind which were the long, thin beams that held the shape of the balloon. They had been built in segments and the crash had scattered many of them leaving him with different lengths to work with. He spent two hours collecting what he needed for the sled's frame which would consist of two long poles connected in the middle by shorter ones. The entire thing would resemble the contraption he'd hauled Azula up out of her snow cave with, shaped like a V with him pulling at the pointed end. Smaller lengths of metal would connect it in the middle and he could cover the bottom in thin metal plates.

What he really needed was the canvass that did the work of trapping the heated gas inside the balloon. Without it he didn't think he could make the bottom of the sled smooth enough for easy pulling, which it would need given its weight.

There was little left of the canvass that had not been burn up or to the point of uselessness but he did spy some at the tip of the balloon frame over the section he and Azula lived in. He climbed up into the wreck and was careful not to snag himself or fall. Gaining the top he carefully cut the unburnt canvass free after first knocking loose the armored cone tip which fit over the end in one single piece. He let most of the heavy canvass fall where it was buffeted by the wind down to the area between the ship halves.

His climb down was more treacherous and when he was about twice his height from the snowy ground he decided to jump rather than risk catching his ankle in a bend of metal. He sunk up to his waist which reminded him that he would also need a pair of snowshoes if he intended to play sled polar dog.

He spent the rest of the day, or what passed for it that far south, putting together the sled. The frame was easy enough and he found the canvass had been held together with mailable steel wire which he used to fasten the metal plates and beams for the frame. He had enough canvass left over to make a yolk for himself which would strap around his shoulders and under his arms to distribute the weight evenly over his muscles.

The nose cone he knocked off was two pieces of triangular metal which he thought would make serviceable snowshoes if he could manage to create suitable foot bindings. This task he took back into the airship where Azula lie awake in the yellow flickering light of the lantern.

He sat looking at what he had to work with and imagining how they would come together. It took his mind off his fatigue and rumbling stomach.

"What are you doing?" Azula asked, her voice sounding stronger than it had before.

"Trying to make snowshoes so I don't sink out there. The sled is done, we can leave as soon as I'm done with these and take a nap."

"Be quick about it," she muttered.

"I'm not the one in a hurry to freeze to death on some nameless mountain," Sokka said.

"I keep telling you it's warm there. And if you're still not convinced, why go? It's not as if I have a say in anything around here."

He sighed, talking to her having broken his concentration. "There's more than one reason why we can't stay here and since no one's coming to rescue us soon enough then we probably should try something at least."

"You should just agree with me right away rather than argue. It saves time," Azula said.

He let the metal he was working on fall to his feet. "Seeing as how you need me to do everything for you, maybe you could be less annoying," he said.

He saw her amber eyes go wide and in the lamplight she looked like a night bird before shutting them tight. When they came open again a tired, serene look had come over her. "I can't stop thinking about that accursed mountain," she said. "I dream about it when I sleep, I think about it here in the dark...I can hear and feel it, like it's just outside. If you refused to take me to it I'd crawl to it. Something isn't right."

Sokka nodded slowly and thought maybe the crash had knocked her brains loose. "Well..." he reached for the right words wondering who would judge him if he said nothing and let her suffer. "You did say volcanoes sometimes, uh, talk to powerful firebenders. A swamp once talked to Aang so maybe the mountain is trying to help us."

"The fire underneath it, anyway," she said, closing her eyes again. "I keep trying to tell it I'm coming so it will shut up already but then I can hear my...never mind," she said. "Just make haste."

Sokka rolled his eyes and returned to his work.

As the day wore on, he sensed something in the air, something he tried to ignore, thinking his prior thoughts about the Deep Cold were affecting his senses. -You're imagining it,- he thought. -It's not coming on, it's summer.-

A voice within reminded him that summer meant little down here, as the distance between normal temperature and blood freezing was much shorter than it was farther north. He took off a glove and flexed his hand. An older member of his tribe might have beamed with pride at his innate sense that a Deep Cold was coming on, but none were around to do so aside from perhaps a few lost spirits. He looked to the west and saw another storm was on its way, and so he moved what he had done of the sled closer to the airship and went inside.

"We have a problem," he said. Azula was lying still and hadn't heard him. He shook her gently awake. "Hey, we've got trouble."

"What?"

"It's going to get cold," he said. "Really cold."

"It's really cold now," she said. "Let me sleep."

"No, I mean a Deep Cold is coming on. I can feel it out there. "That's not good."

"What do you want me to do about it? My bending is too weak to heat this place as it is."

"I know. We need to get in deeper or under something to keep warm. This hallway is too opened up, we have to move at least for a while."

"My leg can't take it," she said.

"Look, this close to the outside, you're going to die if you say here. We might die deeper in."

She seemed to sense he was serious and so she let him carry her into the dark part of the ship. It was slow going as he could not see and had to feel his way around with her in his arms. He bumped her against something solid a few times and was assaulted by curses and slaps each time. Soon enough he found an officers quarters and set her down on a loose feather mat.

Sokka wouldn't call the room warmer than the hall, but it was less cold. When he went back to the hallway to fetch supplies he felt the difference immediately and knew it had not been this chilling before. "That was fast," he muttered, afraid. He grabbed what he could and ran back, feeling the air inside the ship was now close to what it had been outside. "Not good, not good," he muttered, entering the quarters and being thankful the door was not too damage to shut.

"I felt the temperature drop," Azula said.

"Yeah," Sokka said, pulling as many blankets down from the bunk as he could. "Get under these with me."

He piled blankets onto her and then slipped under them, opening his coat and pressing his body close to hers. He did not remember cold being this aggressive but reminded himself he was far south of anywhere he was used to. He had thought to keep his head uncovered but felt the air bite his scalp and so he tucked it under. Azula's leg was hurting her and she was trying to keep quiet about it and failing.

"Sorry," he said. "But you see what I mean about the cold."

"We should have left sooner," she said, he teeth chattering.

"Just raise your body temperature if you can," he said. "I got some food if you need it."

She ate some of the biscuits and he felt the air in their little dark space become warmer. He had to lift the blanket to freshen the air and was greeted by what felt like ice water, only it was air.

"How long does this last?" she asked.

"It can be days, but I'm hoping it's one at the most."

"Days!? I can't keep us warm for days," she said.

"Let's hope it's short, then," he said, sounding braver than he felt.

"Just don't try anything funny," she said.

"Funny? What would I try that's funny? More importantly, why?"

"If you think you might die, who knows what you might do," she said. "Never mind. Forget it."

He thought maybe she was just talking to calm herself, and so he pressed closer to her, feeling her heat. "I hate this too, so relax," he said.

They pressed together for several hours, feeling stabs of awkwardness each time their movements in search of heat or comfort resembled affection. Sokka repeatedly told himself no one was around to see, but that reminded him that no one was likely to find their bodies.

To be continued...


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten.

Lying still and giving off body heat was something she could do asleep as easily as she could awake and so she opted for slumber. It was the only way to make cuddling a savage bearable but she had to admit his wiry, muscular form did give off no small amount of warmth. After what felt like days, but could not have been more than half of one, he stuck his hand out from beneath the blankets.

"I think it's broken," he said. "The Deep Cold. I mean, it's cold, but it doesn't seem as bad now."

They decided if they were going to leave soon, Azula may as well be near the door and so their camp was moved back to the hallway. Her leg suffered no less for it and thought some of her brother's luck might have rubbed off on her.

Once the camp was reestablished, Sokka went outside and left her to face her usual problems. After some hours, she wiped her eyes with her hands, feeling the tears that dampened her face come off as thin bits of ice. Lying on her back dressed in thick cold weather clothing she silently asked whatever spirits would listen to make her pass out if they wouldn't make her leg stop hurting.

She was always in pain, even when she had been sitting for a long time. She'd taken as few toilet breaks as she could get away with as such simple movement would put her in a heightened state of agony for hours. Being moved outside and onto a sled had been a hell that seemed to have lasted days.

Sokka made her a crutch from a piece of metal which she tried unsuccessfully to use. By the end she took a fierce pride in having kept her expressions of pain down to a few tears and whimpers. She had wanted to scream herself hoarse but her voice was one of the few weapons she had left to her.

"All set?" he asked, setting their meager rations onto the sled by her side, followed by a sack containing all the useful tools and items they'd recovered from the crashed ship.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The pain in her leg, cold on her skin, and rumbling in her stomach consumed her senses and she paid enough attention to be sure all was well with the sled around her before falling back into her own world of private agony.

Being a firebender she knew wounds and pain. Cuts, scrapes, and bumps were nothing compared to burns which were persistent and powerful. Broken bones she found were similar to burns in that way. The pain she felt now was like standing in deep water, trying to keep her head above it so as not to be overwhelmed. Every so often a wave would come over her, perhaps to remind her who was in control.

All her meditation techniques seemed useless. The sled's motion was constant but jerky and when the wind gusted it stung her, further testing her concentration. The last trick she knew was to focus on the pain and the pain alone, to feel it so completely there was nothing else. Pain couldn't exist on its own, it needed something else to give it perspective and so she sought to make it the only thing she was experiencing. This worked and the pain became a buzzing, warm sensation.

Pain was how the body knows it's hurt, she remembered. -Well, have you figured it out now?- she thought. She imagined what the bone looked like compared it to the other unbroken one and the image of a snapped twig came to mind. She thought if she could accurately picture how the bone had broken the pain would leave her alone.

Gruesome as these thoughts were they were better than thoughts of the mountain which had been so persistent they had worn her down like the tide wears down a sand castle. She remembered her conversation with the Water Tribe boy from earlier when she corrected him and said the fire beneath the mountain was calling to her. He had been right, had he not? It wasn't fire under the mountain calling, it was the mountain itself. -Or something else,- she thought.

She tapped her wounded leg with her foot and let the pain wash over her to drown out her thoughts.

There was no way to tell time in the state she was in. The sky never seemed to change. The sun was in the west now and she had been in too much pain when they left to notice where it had been before. They were going slower now and once she decided that wasn't her imagination they stopped.

The snowshoes Sokka made flopped near the bottom of the sled and he pulled up a long, wide piece of canvass. He stood by her injured side and let the wind blow the canvass over her before tucking one end under the sled. He tucked the other side down as well and did the bottom after he crawled under it.

"What are you doing?" she asked, feeling every movement of the sled in her leg. Her entire body tensed she he lay against her his head touching her shoulder.

"Sleeping," he said, his voice muffled. "I'm tired and we need to share body heat."

His presence made her squirm but the opportunity to do something useful had presented itself and so she focused on raising her body temperature to keep them both warm under the canvass. It was more difficult to do than she thought and the energy flowing through her body made it feel like there was a cold hole on her injured leg.

Azula tried to remain awake knowing the dreams of the mountain would overtake her, but she was unable to fight sleep for long. This time she was at the mountain basking in the warmth of its shadow, feeling the pulse from deep inside. There was something new, now. A slithering sound like smooth rocks moving against each other filled her ears under the pulsing. It had a rhythm to it that kept time with the pulsing and reminded her almost of speech.

Her mother was back. This time a distant speck in the east although Azula could see her clearly. She stood in the manner of someone at a graveside and Azula sensed she turning her head away although she never quite completed the motion.

Azula shouted began shouting at her. She didn't know what she said but it was like a burden had been lifted from her and she looked down to see her legs worked and she was standing. Her mother was gone now and she looked back to the mountain, knowing whatever was there had nothing to do with the woman. Nonsense and mind-fluff was all she had been.

The slithering sound was louder and had a wet quality to it like a tongue over a set of lips or teeth.

She woke up to see Sokka's dark skinned, bleary face close to hers. His lips were pursed and he muttered something that sounded like "Suki" as he tried to kiss her. She slapped his cheek and jerked her head back as he rolled away and rose to wakefulness. "Ow," he said, rubbing his face. He looked around and winced when he saw her.

"Have a nice nap, did you? Sweet dreams?"

"The sweetest," he mumbled.

He rose and rolled up the canvass they had used for a makeshift tent letting the heat into the air. He had some trouble fixing his snowshoes back to his feet but after a few minutes succeeded and went back to towing the sled. Her leg hurt less now and she left it that way feeling the mountain press at the back of her head while the western sky swirled with another storm, one she thought Sokka had to have noticed. She watched it, seeing it was hours away yet and tried not to think too much about the wet slithering sound she'd heard the mountain make.

To be continued...


	11. Part II: The Mountains of Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is where Crazy4WritingB2 at FF.net began to beta read. Many thanks, the story is better for it.

Part II: The Mountains of Madness

Chapter One.

Sokka's boomerang thunked into the icy snow, allowing him to pull himself and the sled a few more feet. He had come to the grim conclusion that he was a dead man and that reaching the top of this slope would be his last accomplishment.

His stomach had stopped growling and, having nothing in it to vomit up, seemed content to try and turn itself inside out instead. His arms and legs were chilled and weighed down by the seemingly ever-present moisture. His bleary eyes were fixed on the dark divot where the snowy slope met the base of mountain. If it was a shadow, he would die there without further exertion and if it was some crevasse or cave, then he would crawl a little farther and die beneath the rock. With no remaining sensation in his limbs, Sokka had to trust his muscle memory to make the right motions that would carry him forward. He had no will to drive him, only the cold, clinical knowledge that as soon as he stopped, that was where he would lie forever, with ice encasing his corpse in a matter of hours.

When he reached the shadowy place he had been straining to reach, he sunk to his knees in the shallow snow. There was a rock to his left around which he looped the sled strap before collapsing completely.

The life-stopping air came in through his coat, and inwardly he began to scream. His mental cries were silenced by a second inner voice, one that told him he had done the work of two polar dogs on a half-empty stomach, and this was all his body could do. It wasn't a harsh voice, nor was it full of mockery as it sometimes was when his ideas and plans failed.

There is no point in feeling stupid when you are dead, he supposed before finally closing his eyes.

Suddenly, there was a weight on him, pushing him downward, forcing his numb face further into the snow. He felt himself being batted at through his coat, and there was a savage hissing in his ear.

"Get up!" the furious voice said, colored with a hint of what Sokka thought was desperation. "Get up, you worthless fool! We made it!"

"Five more minutes, mom," he said with slurred words.

"Your mother is dead!" the voice continued, the punches to his back increasing in tempo. "She died a fool's death. Your bitterness over it is what drove you here! Get up and move! I, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation, command you!"

Her words sounded awkward to his ears, as though her harsh cries were being read from a hastily-written script. Her voice cracked, and even through his dim sense of hearing, he could detect agony and tears beneath the fury. She was still striking his back as though trying to break it.

"Get up! Move, you barbarian! Move or I'll kill you!" she tried to scream but could only croak, both the gelid air and her exhaustion having all but worn out her voice.

Silence, then the sound of a girl crying. A few moments later, a rasping could be heard as though from down a dark tunnel, and he felt something tugging at the front of his coat. The crying was interrupted by angry shouts that came with each tug, and he could feel cold snow sliding down the front of his chest, barely melting as it came into contact with his skin. That was the last sensation Sokka felt before the blackness that had been blurring his thoughts overtook him, and he happily let it blanket him.

When he woke up, he did not feel refreshed. Before, he had felt soggy and cold, but now he felt rotten and wet. His head tilted towards a crackling sound, and he saw something that made no sense to him. A fire. It wasn't a large one, mostly coals now, glowing in the middle of a slipshod pile of thin wooden bits. The weak but warm flames had not been tended, and unburnt ends of the wood ringed the flame like a flower with the jagged white and black ends all pointing inward.

There was enough light to show Sokka that he was in a cave, but his astonishment was cut short when he sat up, his enervated bones feeling like they'd fall apart and become one with the slush near his feet where a small stream ran.

"Huh, wha?" he managed to utter, looking around for some explanation.

Sokka managed to get to his feet with great effort. Fighting waves of dizziness and the desire to drop to the floor, Sokka staggered to the other side of the fire where he saw the disheveled bag of supplies he had been dragging behind him for...He didn't know how long it had been. Time had been hard to sense lately.

He knelt over the supplies and found a bag of biscuits. He ate two and then fell backward near the fire to let it warm him.

The fire's existence was still a mystery. As he nudged bits of wood into the coals, he noticed they had been shaped and were not twigs or pieces of wood broken off a tree. As he thought of possible explanations for why the wood was the way it was he looked around for Azula. He found her lying close by the fire, face down with her arms spread out as though she'd collapsed there and had not been able to move afterward. He went to her, felt her pulse, and found that she was breathing. As gently as his unsteady limbs would allow, he rolled her onto her back where her mouth hung slack and her eyes rolled white behind their lids.

His first instinct was to wake her, but instead he looked at her leg. Cringing at the idea that she could awaken while he was undressing her, he rapidly took off her outer layer of clothing. Beneath it she wore a uniform that fit her better, but the pant leg had been cut off to allow room for the splint. He felt for the bone with his numb hands, the pain making her moan in her slumber, and discovered that the bandages and splint had done their jobs remarkably well. Her bandages needed changing, but his fingers were still stiff and clumsy and he thought it could wait.

Sokka set to work making Azula as comfortable by the fire as best he could, propping her head and leg up with blankets and covering her with a thinner blanket as it was warm in the cave.

"Guess you were right about this place," he said, imagining her smiling and saying something nice.

Azula was fairly pleasant to speak to when unconscious, he noted.

The wall of rock near their supplies, which reflected welcoming heat back towards them, was part of a steep slope. There was evidence in the dirt and rocks of Azula having dragged herself and him inside, then she going for a second trip to retrieve their supplies. He could imagine the speech she'd give him if once she woke up and got her strength back, but it would be worth it to learn where she found the wood for the fire. He decided that eating a few more biscuits for energy was justified, but the feeling of food entering his empty stomach did very little to tame his hunger, and his now-slightly-more-full stomach churned in anger at being offered such little food. After eating the biscuits and drinking from the stream, he followed the little brook's path, using one of the lamps for light.

The stream took him down a dark slope, and despite the curiosity that tried to hasten his steps, Sokka forced himself to tread carefully. The ground beneath his feet was mostly rock, but there was a thin layer of black sand on which he could easily slip, and where he could see signs of Azula having limped along or dragged herself.

"That must have hurt," he said aloud, trying to think she deserved it but feeling unable to muster his usual level of ill-will towards her.

Rounding a corner, he nearly dropped the lantern. Not that losing its light would have been a great loss, as he was now able to see without it.

It was a large cavern, and stalactites hung from the dim ceiling that Sokka had to strain his neck to see. The stream he had been following widened out into a little river before fanning into a shallow pool rimmed with slimy glowing fungus.

"Oh, wow," he said with an out-breath, staring into the blackness on the other side of the glowing pool.

The light was green like that of the torch bugs' he'd seen in the fields of the Earth Kingdom. He doused the lantern, and noted he could could see something like those bugs in the air over the pool. They blinked and flickered, unlike the steady glow of the fungus, and he suspected they were either bugs or fungal spores.

There was a sandy bank rimming the pool which he walked along looking for what Azula had used for firewood.

-She couldn't have gone far,- he thought. -And that wood looked like it belonged to something... unless trees grow square down here.-

He found the answer to his question by a pile of rocks. Using a flint and steel, he relit the lantern for a closer look.

It was a polar dog sled, or what was left of one. The leather bindings had rotted away, leaving a bundle of sticks. Azula's drag marks didn't go beyond it, so this must have been where she had gathered the dry, brittle wood. He went around to the other side of the rock pile where he wasn't surprised to see a decayed body.

The hood of the corpse's parka had been drawn up, and out from it poked a skeletal face. The eyes were shrunken, shriveled and darkened like dried fruit, and the skin had contracted around the bones so that in some places, there looked to be no skin at all. The jaw hung down, its hinge having all but given out, making it look as though the person were yawning at their feet. The body's clothes intrigued Sokka the most, however.

"Water Tribe," he said, his voice echoing in the green tinged gloom. "Northern Water Tribe..."

Sokka knew he could be wrong, since he was no fashion expert, but there were small differences between the Water Tribes' preferred outfits that he knew but could not name. Something about this one screamed Northern Water Tribe, but at the same time, something was off about it.

His relief that he and Azula were not the first people to come here was countered somewhat by evidence that at least one of those people had never left. He searched the body for clues, finding that sifting through dry bones was much better than freshly dead, frozen ones. A shiver ran down his spine when his hand clasped on something solid in the corpse's front pocket.

It was a book, a rare thing when scrolls were the preferred method of writing. Bound in treated leather, its pages stiff and brittle, the book looked almost as old as those he had seen in the Spirit Library, yet different. Sokka held it up to the light. A name had been scratched into the cover that read "Hoplo."

It was a journal, so he could see, and he nearly opened it right there but stopped himself. His fingers were still unsteady. The wonder of the cave had made him forget the poor shape he was in, so instead of giving into his curiosity, Sokka tucked the journal into his pocket and gathered as much of the dog sled as he could carry before going back to the campsite.

The fire was just glowing coals now, so he added small sticks to it, mindful of the fact that this was all there was to burn.

-There's no way this fire is heating the entire cave,- he thought idly. -It must be naturally warm here.-

Pleased he was not dead and could put freezing to death down a few notches on his list of ways he would likely die, Sokka tossed a few more pieces of wood onto the fire and watched Azula to make sure she didn't stir too much and hurt herself. When fatigue overtook him, he didn't fight it this time, knowing it would be the good kind of sleep and not the bad kind he had before. As he drifted off, he tried to that think he and Azula had a fighting chance now, but even in his dreams, Sokka could not forget the bones of who he assumed was Hoplo.

To be continued...


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

The sickly green light made the rocks look wet. Just looking at them made her feel like she was covered in green pond scum that wriggled and writhed with a life of its own. She wished she could muster enough heat to burn it all away, but she felt too heavy and simply had to bear the sensation.

"Hey," said the Water Tribe boy, his voice low but still succeeding in snapping Azula out of her daze. He squatted next to her like a toad and was holding a tin cup. "Can you take a drink?"

Even though she felt wet and sticky, she was dehydrated, and her lips, normally smooth and colored red, were cracked and dry. Her tongue felt like damp leather and her lips sandy pieces of wood. Her throat still functioned to some degree, but she could form nothing more than a croak, one she hoped sound like "Yes."

He dribbled water from the cup into her mouth, and she choked, hurting all over as he body convulsed.

Making what sounded to Azula like a noise of agitation, Sokka took a piece of cloth which he crumpled into a ball, soaked in the cup, and put in her mouth. It tasted awful, but it moistened her mouth and throat enough for her to be able to take water.

"More," she said, and was able to hold the cup on her own and drink her fill.

"You're coming down off a fever," he said. "I thought it was from your leg, but it looks like that's doing alright. How does it feel?"

"Hurts," she said.

Azula wished that she could think of something sarcastic to say to him, but her mind was too occupied remembering her recent ordeal. Half frozen and with a broken leg, she had dragged a nearly dead boy up a small hill and into a cave, then somehow found wood for a fire before going back out to get their supplies. She had thought she might die along with him after she was done.

"What's happened? What is this place?" she asked abruptly, feeling confusion and a bit of anger at his lack of explanation well up inside of her.

"Looks you were right about this being a good spot," Sokka. "It's warm down here, that water seems alright to drink, and if this guy's journal is right, there might be some mushrooms we can eat."

"Sounds tasty," she said, closing her eyes and heaving a sigh. Her lids slowly came open once she had processed his words. "Did you say journal?"

"Yep. Remember that polar dog sled you found? Behind it was a dead guy. Guess he was part of an exploratory expedition from the Northern Water Tribe two-hundred years ago. I think. It's hard to read."

"I'll look at it when I'm feeling better," Azula said in a tone that told Sokka that was the end of that discussion for now. "So it was a sled, then. I didn't know what it was."

"I don't doubt it. You look like you nearly died." She frowned slightly, which he seemed to notice before adding, "I was pretty close to done for myself."

"You've recovered quickly, I see," she said. "I trust our rations are holding out?"

"Yes," he said, testily. "We've got shelter and water, but food is still not on the menu unless we find some of these mushrooms this guy was writing about. All I've found is this weird glowing slime." He gestured towards a hole he'd dug in the sand , which was filled with the glowing ooze Azula remembered seeing deeper in the cave. She looked away, hating the sight of it and the way it made her feel as though something was crawling on her skin.

Ignoring the urge to incinerate the disgusting slime, Azula turned back to Sokka. "So all we have to do is find this edible mushroom of yours, secure a supply of it, and wait until my leg heals so we can walk out of here. Is that it then?" she said.

"Maybe," Sokka said. "We're a long, long way away from anywhere, and even if you could walk, I don't see it happening."

She coughed and took another sip of water. "As much as I want to spend the rest of my life in this cave with you, I think I'm needed elsewhere in the world. As I'm sure you are as well, to a much smaller degree."

His sneer amused her. "Darn, and here I was looking forward to growing old with you."

The thought of herself as a shriveled old woman being tended to by an equally dried up old savage briefly flashed before her eyes and dampened her mood further. She told herself this was a temporary hardship and she would back amongst civilized people such as Mai and Ty Lee before she knew it. She even thought the company of her brother would be welcome.

"Anyway," Sokka continued. "I was thinking that if we found a steady supply of food, I can go back to the airship on my own. I can use what's left to maybe put together a war balloon, like the one I helped the Mechanist design...which the Fire Nation stole and turned into those lousy airships."

"I assume by lousy you mean superior in every way?" There was something refreshing about needling him. "And once your little balloon is built will you fly off and leave me here to rot?"

"No," he said. "I need you to supply the hot air for the balloon." He laughed suddenly. "Which would be the first time in history the hot air you're full of would be useful!" He chuckled, clearly pleased with his own stupid joke.

Azula rolled her eyes, hoping by the time he built this balloon, she would be strong enough to toss him from it. "In that case, I think I'll conserve what hot air I have left while you search for that edible mushroom, as your lofty plans hinge on it now. Off you go, then."

"Ah, not so fast, princess," he said, waggling a finger almost comically. Azula wanted to snap it off. "He didn't only mention there was an edible mushroom. He said something about toxic ones, too, but I haven't read to where he described them or tells me where they are."

"So you've got some reading to do," she said, yawning and stretching her back painfully. "Let me know if you stumble on a big word, and I'll try and help you."

"Yeah, I'll let you know," he said quickly, getting up and moving behind the glowing fungus.

His abrupt movement stirred a half-memory from her sleep. "How did he die?" she asked before the Water Tribe boy could get too far away.

Sokka turned back to her, confusion in his gaze. "Who? Hoplo? I haven't finished the journal yet."

She shook her head at the ceiling. "Well, skip to the end, then!"

"We've got plenty of time," Sokka said, and she could sense he was smiling even though he wasn't looking at her. "And the location of those mushrooms is more important."

She was silent for a few moments, thinking she would leave it at that, but the memory of her grasping at the pile of broken wood would not leave her, nor would the half-remembered sucking sound or the sticky sensation which she was now convinced was coming from the green light and not the sweat the fever had induced in her.

"What did the body look like? What killed him?" she said forcibly, the question now burning in her mind.

She heard Sokka sigh as he worked to make himself comfortable for a reading session. "He was just sitting there in his parka all dried up. I didn't poke at him much."

"There's a dead man in this cave with us and you're not eager to learn what killed him?" Azula asked, wondering if maybe this was yet another trait of hers that people found unsettling. Her father would understand, he always did.

"I'm more worried about how he lived down here for any length of time than how he died. Maybe he ate a bad mushroom." The dismissive way by which Sokka said this only served to irritate her further.

"All the more reason to find out what did it!" she shouted.

-He's just tormenting me,- she thought. -He's read the end; it was the first thing he looked at, clearly. Fine, play your game, water boy.-

She did her best to relax and let her body recoup. She didn't want to sleep, fearing what she might dream about, but being awake and seeing the ghastly light from the fungus was almost as bad, so she closed her eyes and thought of her friends, Mai and Ty Lee, and how crazy she might sound when she would tell them of this madness later.

To be continued...


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Sokka had been telling the truth about not having skipped to the end of the journal to try and learn how Hoplo met his fate, assuming the dried bones further down in the darkness were indeed those of the man who'd written in dry, flaky pages. Sokka took some small pride in not skipping immediately to the end and instead scanning the intermediate pages for information on food. Part of him simply enjoyed turning pages. He had heard of books in his travels and knew they had mostly been used by priests and scholars in times gone by. He could see why Hoplo had chosen the format for his journal, as they must be easier to write in than a scroll while walking about in a dark cave.

His good mood began to ebb and fade the more he read on. Not that the entries weren't informative or helpful; the entire thing had been written with that in mind, but as he neared the end, his blood had become heavy, and he felt cold.

Hoplo had been a member of the Northern Water Tribe. A historian, he'd been excited to join a group of other scholars and adventurer types from around the world on a trip to its very bottom. The expedition had consisted of some fifty people, mostly Northern Water Tribe like Hoplo, but they also brought two earthbenders, a firebender, and an airbender. The airbender, along with his sky bison, had acted as a scout, taking aloft cartographers to map the terrain and find routes through snowy passes and down loose ice flows. They went in the late spring, giving them what they hoped would be enough time with relatively warm weather to identify points of interest which future explorers could come back to and study in-depth.

According to Hoplo, they encountered no real difficulty in making their way south. Between the various bending abilities on hand, each element working together, few things could impede their progress for long, aside from bouts of bad weather.

Their discoveries early on were little more than geographic formations. Sokka learned that each of the bleak mountains he had flown over on Appa's back had been given names. He found this section boring, and from what he could tell, so had Hoplo. Sokka began to skim entries and skip others until he got to where it seemed Hoplo had begun to write of the caverns.

It was here that Sokka stopped to tend Azula, and as he predicted, more reading revealed the nature of several types of fungus he would find deeper in the caverns. According to Hoplo's crude, faded maps, this was not where the expedition entered the caves, which Sokka took heart from knowing. He had a hunch that he and Azula could make it a fair distance north by traveling underground in the relative warmth of the darkness.

After Azula had gone to sleep again, he went back to reading and saw that Hoplo's entries had quickly taken a turn for the disturbing. While he had not mentioned it in previous entries, Hoplo now began noting that other members of the expedition were suffering from nightmares and "strange, obsessive thought patterns" during their waking hours. Hoplo revealed they all been having dreams and thoughts about a certain mountain range in the distance, clearly the same one he and Azula were now under. What was more, it wasn't just the firebenders who were afflicted.

Hoplo then gave a crude account of what had happened leading up to his arrival at the strange mountains, making Sokka wonder why he'd neglected to write it down before. According to Hoplo, nearly a third of the expedition had suffered the dreams as they approached the mountain. By the time they arrived, more had succumbed and been left all but useless.

Hoplo made vague allusions to a great disagreement which culminated in violence. Sokka wasn't sure, but he thought that maybe Hoplo was part of one of two factions that split the camp. What their goals were and what the nature of their disagreement was, Hoplo didn't say, which annoyed Sokka.

The journal described the discovery of an entrance to the caverns at the bottom of a crevasse, and it was here that Sokka noticed Hoplo's entries became more vivid and laced with detail. His passion had clearly been for what lay beneath the mountains, not human politics. He mentioned a base being set up at the entrance and another argument breaking out over who should stay and who should go.

Hoplo seemed to lose himself in cataloging what he found in the caverns, which Sokka found quite helpful if a little unnerving. Hoplo's meticulousness at first met Sokka's idea of a fastidious academic, noting each detail down to the seemingly frivolous. After a few more entries, however, his thoroughness took on an irritatingly fawning quality, one that reminded Sokka of a love note he had helped a friend write to a girl once when he was young.

He almost wasn't surprised when Hoplo, casually it seemed, mentioned he too had been suffering the dreams and obsessive thoughts about the mountain. An entire entry was dedicated to the life in the mountain all being connected and calling to him. Sokka remembered his visit to the great swamp months back with Aang, where they learned that all life was connected, and it helped him think perhaps Hoplo wasn't completely mad.

He was getting there, that much was clear, as the journal went on to show. Hoplo wrote of tapping into the very heartbeat of the earth, feeling its pulse and learning its origin.

And then Sokka came to the last entry.

He couldn't say why, but he thought this undated entry had been made several days after the one before it. The light he had to read by colored everything green and was dim, but he could tell Hoplo's handwriting had deteriorated, and he'd abandoned the use of big words and flowery language.

-Wrong,- it read. -All wrong. Should have known, should have SEEN. Advanced lifeforms despite no solar energy. Not the heart of life, but life separate. Here before anything else, before the ash clouds cleared and the sunlight fell on the world. Down bellow, the city. Abandoned. Couldn't describe if I had the strength. IT, they, no...it...doesn't matter. Loose. Awake and loose. It's been calling, learned from its masters. Calling for how long? How many eons? Must be insane. No, must have a mind to be insane. Minds? Wish I had time to think, to record. O', Yori.-

He seemed to have written "Yori" with the last of his strength, and it took Sokka a while to make out what the word said, and a while longer to realize it was a name.

He closed the journal finally after marking the pages where the descriptions of mushrooms were and wondered if he dared trust the word of a madman.

-Could be the mushrooms drove him crazy,-Sokka thought, smirking slightly at the recollection of his past experiences with drinking from a cactus in a situation not entirely unlike the one he was currently in.

-In about a week, I won't have a choice,-he thought sullenly, knowing the bodies of the Fire Nation soldiers were still at the wreckage, frozen.

"No, it's not mushrooms," Sokka muttered, looking at Azula.

He had assumed all her tossing and turning was from pain, but now he wondered what she was really seeing when her eyes rolled around behind closed lids.

While her fever had broken, she still looked worn down and pale, like a wax doll. Her cheekbones were sharper, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes, which had sunken into their sockets. He didn't think he looked much better. He got up and reminded himself to take everything one problem at a time. He would search for food soon but now wanted to know what killed Hoplo. Had he gone mad and starved down here in the dark? How had that polar dog sled come to be with him? The journal didn't say, but perhaps Hoplo's body might.

Sokka filled a lantern casing with the green, glowing fungus and picked up his boomerang to go examine the dead man.

To be continued...


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

The heat had gone, but the pulsing remained, along with the soothing sound of water running over rocks. It was like a voice, singing to itself some song of triumph that made her feel small and shrunken. She wanted to feel that way, better to go unnoticed by whatever had been calling to her. She wanted to run, broken leg or no, into the snowfield where the cold would drain the life from her and leave her hard as ice under the snow. It would be better than the voice finding her.

Azula woke and was swiftly reminded by her leg that she wasn't running from anything should it find her. She envisioned her leg as some large, sucking parasite that was slowly taking the life from her and replacing it with coldness and pain. She wanted to believe it explained her dreams but knew that wasn't the case. In addition to pain, her thirst and hunger were back in force, and she picked her head up to look for Sokka in the nauseating green light.

He was nowhere to be seen, and she remembered the journal he'd been talking about. She doubted he understood half of what he claimed to have read and figured he'd gone off to look at the body he talked about having discovered.

"Probably to prod at it more," she muttered, rubbing her temples and noting happily that she could easily think about other things than the pulsing heat which had drawn her here.

Her mind was now on the corpse Sokka had likely gone to investigate, and she hoped his savage intellect was able to glean something from the remains, such as what caused them to be there.

It was a long time before Sokka returned, during which Azula fell asleep a few times only to be woken with a start by a feeling of dread and panic. Her leg had punished her each time she woke with such violence that she started to become irritated with herself.

Sokka came into view of the fungus light carrying a makeshift sack, which he set beside her and opened it to reveal a dozen or so dull red mushroom caps.

"I had a few," he said, handing her one. "They don't taste bad."

She took it and learned they tasted like nothing. The top skin was a bit tough but the underside was moist and barely required chewing. She ate two and found that for mushrooms they were rather filling as well.

"You've done well," she said after taking her last swallow.

"I did," he agreed, eating one himself. "There's a lot where I found these so eat up."

She took another but felt like she might have to take her time eating it. "The journal was correct, then," she said, breaking the comfortable silence.

"Yeah...you still want to know about what killed Hoplo." He didn't phrase it like a question.

"Of course."

Sokka took a deep breath and told her about the expedition, how it went mad, and how Hoplo appeared to have shared the same fate as the rest of his comrades. She stopped eating as he talked about the madness and described Hoplo's last entry where he talked about a web of life separate from everything, a city, and something that had been set loose.

"What do you think it means?" she asked, wishing she had someone aside from a savage to bounce her opinions off.

"I thought he was crazy," Sokka said matter-of-factly.

"Thought?" Azula raised an eyebrow at him, silently asking for an explanation.

"Yeah..." Sokka was sitting cross-legged, his hands dangling over his knees. She saw his fingers twiddle as he stared down the dark passage where Hoplo's body lie. "I took a closer look at his body. I couldn't tell you for sure what killed him, but he looked like he was having a rough time. His clothes are torn, and his skin looks like it was scraped and cut. He might have broken bones, but it's hard to tell what rotting did to him and what happened before he died."

"Can you tell if he starved?"

"I don't see how he could. He knew all about what was edible down here and what wasn't."

"Maybe he took a bite of something that wasn't," Azula said.

Confusion crossed over the Water Tribe boy's features. "Why would he do that?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps it was too dark to see what he was eating, or maybe he didn't know as much about poisonous mushrooms as you give him credit for. Maybe he did it on purpose because he had gone stark raving mad, like the others."

Sokka seemed hesitant. "That could happen to you, you know. The madness."

"I'll be fine," she said sharply. "These poor fools likely had no idea what they were dealing with, but my mind is not only as strong as iron, but I also have some context they didn't."

"And what would that context be, exactly?"

She hadn't thought this point out as thoroughly as she would have liked and cursed herself for speaking in the first place.

"I...well...There's something here that causes certain people to have strange thoughts and dreams. I'll just ignore them and be fine."

"Yeeeaah," Sokka said. "What are the dreams of yours like exactly? You said earlier you thought the fire under the mountain was speaking to you, but that's not it, is it? "

She didn't want to tell him the truth, or at least not all of it, but now found the desire to unload her burden to be too great.

"I don't remember them well.," she began slowly. "They started with a pulsing kind of heat, back when we were at the airship. I began to hear a slithering sound as we came closer, like rocks being moved by water, but it changed we got here." Her voice had quieted to a whisper, and she had the strangest sense the cave could hear her.

"Changed how?" asked Sokka.

"It always had a kind of rhythm to it, but now it sounds like someone is talking in some language I don't understand. I can tell it's happy we're here, but that's it. My mind feels freer, too, like the voice isn't talking to me anymore, but I can still hear it." She thought that she sounded like some carnival fortune teller, and the notion made her face burn.

"That's kinda good, isn't it?" Sokka asked, sounding as though he did not think so.

"I doubt it. I may not feel drawn to this place anymore, but there's no need to bait a trap that's been sprung, is there?"

"You think something lured us here? What?"

"I don't know!" Azula said, clenching her fists. "All I know is that it's happy we're here, and hearing it makes my blood congeal."

"Maybe the happiness of others just has that affect on you," Sokka said, smirking and leaning back to eat more mushrooms.

"I'm normally quite cheerful, you know," she said, annoyed and wondering why she was defending herself to a peasant. "I'm injured, starved, frozen, and at the mercy of my enemy, so naturally I'm in a bad mood."

"I think I've been treating you pretty good considering your attitude," he said, popping another mushroom into his mouth. "You'd have probably killed me if it was reversed."

-Probably,- she thought. "I dragged you in here, didn't I?"

"So you could have a lemur-monkey to help you," Sokka said, folding his arms against his chest.

"Whatever," she said, not believing she'd wasted so much energy on such a conversation. "Hoplo. What killed him? That's what we need to know."

"You think it was some kind of spirit or something?" Sokka asked. "If it was, then we're in trouble, because the only way I see out of here is by retracing Hoplo's steps under the mountain to where he came in."

"What? Why? Wasn't our plan for you to scrap together a war balloon from the airship wreckage?"

"That's still the plan," Sokka said. "But while I was picking mushrooms, I did a lot of thinking. I don't think we can launch a balloon from this side of the mountain and not be blown into the side of it."

"Why not?" she asked, wondering if he was lying or simply wrong.

"It's really high for one thing. For another, the wind blows in from the west and does it faster the higher up you go. If we launched a balloon from this side I don't think we could get it up high enough before the wind smashed us into the mountain top. If we can make it to where Hoplo and his friends came in, we might have better luck."

She cocked an eyebrow, still not convinced of this supposed wind hazard. "Why don't we just head out farther west?" she suggested.

"Because the wind would take us back here, and I think there's a down draft up there that would drop our altitude and do the same thing as if we'd launched from the base of the mountain."

"And you base this off of what, exactly?"

"From watching the storm that blew in as we came here. I wasn't so out of it then that I wasn't paying attention."

"So in other words, you're going to drag material for a balloon through those caverns, build it on the other side, then fly us north to either a Water Tribe village or a Fire Nation ship?"

"That's kinda the plan," Sokka said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"That's going to take some time," she said.

"Time enough for you to get your strength up," he told her. "No firebender, no hot air for the balloon. So eat up." He moved the bag of mushrooms closer to her and then stood. "I'm going to go back to the airship and see what I've got to work with."

She felt like the ground had been taken from underneath her, and she covered her dread by coughing. As she hacked and wheezed, she nodded her head, telling him she agreed with his plan.

"I won't be long," he said. "There's probably nothing here that can really hurt you, so just try to ignore whatever pops into your head from outside."

"I'll be fine," she said, her lips curling back as she felt a draft of fear. "You worry about yourself out there in the snow."

To be continued...


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen 

Sokka wondered if he could even build a war balloon given the materials he would have. He had debated trying to reach the crevasse first but decided that if a cave-in had made it inaccessible or Hoplo's map was wrong, he could still launch from this side, as inadvisable as that would be. His one thought now was about how hard finding enough canvass for the balloon was going to be, given the time he had taken scrounging up enough for the sled.

He thought to ask Azula if the ship had been supplied with emergency canvass for patch jobs, but did not want to give her another excuse to delay him. First she demanded to be moved to the far end of the cave, away from the entrance to the caverns, and then she wanted the glowing fungus they'd been using for light to be moved farther back. After that, she gave him a dozen small tasks under the guise of making the cave more livable. He did each one but stopped when started telling him to set things back the way they were.

He almost felt bad about leaving her alone but remembered the burn mark on Aang's back where she'd hit him with a lighting bolt.

This time, the journey over the snowfield was easy. He fantasized about how easy it would be, just walking out of the cold waste on his own, but he knew he could not carry enough food to survive and could not in good conscience leave Azula. He kept his eyes on the gray, blank sky, still hoping he would see Appa.

Several hours later, he had gathered what he would need for the balloon's basket and set it out between the crashed airship sections before loading it onto his sled and going off to search for a store of canvass. The glowing fungus he brought had become considerably dimmer from the cold despite his keeping it close to his body for warmth, but it still lit the inside of the ship better than the greasy oil lanterns.

With more food in him and no danger of running out, he was much stronger than before and used his energy to knock down doors and remove barriers that had stopped him before.

"Yes!" he shouted in triumph, finding a storeroom with several boxes containing folded sheets of canvass. "Things are lookin' up!"

There were three boxes with enough canvass to make a small balloon. He piled them in the hallway where he and Azula had lived and took another look around for anything else he might find useful. It would be another hard pull back to the mountain, but he felt like he could make it in a few hours' time.

Or at least he would when the storm that had blown in let up.

"Crap," he said, looking out the bent door to where his sled was being covered in snow. He went outside and dragged it closer to the ship, glad he'd brought enough food with him to last a day or two. With the sled and supplies secure, Sokka went back into the airship and tried not to feel too bad about Azula.

Perhaps as long as a day after the storm had blown in, he was grunting with the strain of looping the sled's harness around the rock outside the entrance to the caverns. When it was secured, he sunk to his knees, but this time it was only to catch his breath. Breathing the cold air was like swallowing liquid knives, so he crawled forward and slipped into the cave's entrance with thoughts of mushrooms and a low fire on his mind.

Standing over the ledge that overlooked the cave floor, he saw the pile of green glowing fungus he'd left was scattered over the floor, raising only a dim green light as it died from lack of moisture. The air smelled strange, like something had been burning. He moved quietly down the slope and picked his way along the side of cave towards the spot where he'd left Azula.

A bright blue flame erupted, and he barely ducked in time to avoid it. It sailed over his head and hit the wall before turning orange and fizzling out. Another blue flame appeared, this one weaker and held still between Azula's fingers, illuminating her pale, damp face and wide, seemingly black eyes.

"You," she said, relief clear in her voice as her face relaxed. Then, anger crossed her expression, and Sokka braced himself for her oncoming rant. "What in blazes took you so long!?"

"A blizzard," he said tiredly. He turned, taking in the scorch marks on the walls and floor, and sighed. "What did you do, go crazy?"

"I'm not crazy!" she shrieked, her eyes moving rapidly around the cave as if something else was there with them. "It was here! It came to the edge of the cave there and started gibbering at me, so I burned it!"

Sokka heaved a sigh once more, wondering how much damage she'd done to their supplies. "You had a bad dream. Am I going to have to tie you down so you don't cook me in your sleep?"

"It was no dream, fool," Azula responded, her voice as frigid as the air outside. "See for yourself. By the tunnel entrance, look."

He took out the fungus lantern he kept and wet it by the stream before going to look at what she thought was the problem. He saw more scorch marks on the walls and noted with a disgusted twitch of his nose that the strange burnt smell was strongest there.

"There's nothing here," he called back.

"It was!" she shouted. "Can't you smell it? Rocks don't smell like that when they burn."

They didn't, he conceded, but perhaps glowing fungus did. "Right, well, looks like you taught it a lesson."

He began gathering up the fungus that had scattered and piling it into its original hole where he watered it and hoped it would glow again at full strength so he wouldn't have to go into the dark tunnel and gather more.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Her voice was resigned, tired, as she peered at him in the dim light.

Sokka sat near the fungal light, which he was pleased to see was growing in intensity, and let his head dip, finally letting the tension leave his neck and back.

"I found enough stuff to build us a balloon," he told her, not answering her question. "Now all we need to do is get on the other side of the caverns and we can fly up and away."

Azula's eyes widened. "You don't expect me to go in there, do you? I'm not insane, but I'd have to be to do that!"

He cleared his throat and considered saying nothing, but he was already in a bad mood. He wanted to call her crazy but Hoplo's journal and the smell that filled the air made him think perhaps she wasn't.

"I kept a good eye on that blizzard that delayed me, and what I said before about the wind on this side of the mountain is true," he said, trying to keep a tone of irritation out of his voice. "I'll find the crevasse on my own, I'll even build the balloon on my own, but when it comes time to fill the canvass with hot air, I'll drag you if I have to."

She started laughing, and the flame she held went out. She chuckled a bit longer from her nest in the shadows. "Well in that case, do what you like. You'll see it my way eventually."

To be continued...


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

She didn't want to sleep but knew that before long, her body would have its way. Azula supposed that was for the better, as she would need her strength if, or when, the thing came back. Her head was covered in a coat to shield her from the disgusting green fungus light the Water Tribe boy favored. She could hear him moving around the cavern, his two legs scrapping against the rock, scattering small pebbles as he went about preparing for whatever he planned to do. The sound was recognizable as being human, made by something with two legs, two eyes, and two arms, like her, and she took a bit of refuge in that fact.

She could remember in vivid detail the event which troubled her but could not seem to fasten her mind around the thing itself. What had it looked like? She had the impression of a mass and movement but nothing more and not been able to describe much to Sokka when he finally asked what it had looked like. This, of course, had made him even more reluctant to believe her.

She had been dreaming when it woke her. Her dream had been more of that slithering, singing nonsense, so she almost didn't realize the reality was upon her. It was reality that had saved her. When it moved through her mind, it made no sound beyond the slithering music, but when it moved through the world, it disturbed rocks and sand. These noises had caused her eyes to pop open and see the thing in the green light by the cavern entrance.

Azula had lain paralyzed, thinking there was some other explanation for what she was seeing. The fungus light and a heated air current, perhaps, but nothing could account for the noise, like a thousand people babbling quietly at once. It didn't seem to have a color, and how it moved she couldn't say. Oozing wasn't the right word, and neither was slither, but they were close.

All she could say for sure was it was an enemy, and that was enough for her mind to find purchase so her body could act. She sent plumes of blue fire at it, enough to wear her out and set her leg in a wash of pain, but none of that was a concern so long as the oozing, gibbering thing was gone or dead.

It hadn't liked her fire, and after she saw it retreat, she did the same, seeking the back of the cave after blasting the pool of glowing fungus to pieces. Something about the light she hated was that it seemed almost as though it were in league with the gibbering thing. She didn't know how long she crouched in the dark but knew it was longest time of her life. Having Sokka back was a fool's comfort but one she was glad for.

His footsteps came closer and stopped in front of her. "Hey," Sokka said, tapping her good leg with his boot. "You awake? I need to check your bandage."

She slowly uncovered her head, not wanting to appear weak, and let him examine her leg. She took a look, too. The break in the skin was no longer leaking blood, and when he unwrapped the bandage, it didn't look as through the bone had gone crooked.

"Lucky," he said with a click of his tongue. "For all the abuse you've been giving it, it's doing good."

"That I've been giving it?"

"I didn't say the abuse wasn't necessary," Sokka said. "But be careful; your luck might not hold out forever, and if it opens up again, we might not be able to keep infection out."

"My leg should be the least of your concerns if you plan on heading deeper into that cavern," she said coldly.

"Well, if what you said is true, then the monster or whatever it is has no problem coming here, so I don't see how it makes a difference," he said, adjusting the splint on her leg where it was a little loose.

She winced at both the tightness and the way he had phrased his answer. "If what I said is true? Do you really think I'm crazy?"

"You can read Hoplo's journal for yourself if you want," he said. "But it's pretty clear something about this place drove him and the others nutty. Maybe they only saw the monsters."

She studied his face carefully, narrowing her eyes. "You do believe me, don't you? At least a little."

"Don't get the wrong idea," he retorted. "There was this island I used like to take my canoe out to and fish from, until one day I heard a ghost story about it. I'd never seen anything out there myself, but once I heard the story, it was different. You spooked me is all."

She nodded slowly. "Alright then. Well, I forgot to tell you. After the monster left, a dozen fair maidens showed up carrying platters of deep fried tiger seal steaks. They said they'd be around if any strapping Water Tribe boys came by. Better now?"

He looked at her for a long moment, his round jaw slightly slack before forming into a smile.

She smiled wryly back at him, and then he laughed, slapping his knee. "Good one," he said, rubbing imaginary tears of laughter out of the corners of his eyes. "But seriously, if there really is a monster, then it will be back, and the wind out there isn't a joke either. I think we stand a better chance against the monster than we do powerful arctic wind and gravity."

Azula wanted to tell him she'd risk being dashed against snowy rocks rather than even look at that thing again but knew he would not understand. He would have to see it for himself before he learned, and she only hoped she would be able to say "I told you so."

"When will you be leaving again?" she asked.

"After I eat," he said. "While you were sleeping I was getting ready to go. Hoplo's got some rough maps of the caverns which I'm hoping are still up to date. They're not too clear, but if I mark my trail I should be fine."

"How long will you be?" she asked, ashamed at feeling afraid of being left alone again.

He sighed, clearly not wanting to tell her. "Could be a few days," he said. "It looks like Hoplo logged a week and a half coming through, but he was taking his time and exploring with a polar dog sled in tow. I'll be following a map to the other side and coming right back once I know we can make it."

She could see him now, running back into the cave while screaming in that girly, cracking voice of his. How long would it be? A few hours at most. It suddenly occurred to her there might be more than one of the things crawling around in the caverns, a thought that made her shake like she was cold.

"Just be quick about it," she said, getting angry to calm herself. "Regardless of what you believe, I know there's something nasty in those caverns, and while you're gone, I'll be left here to wonder if you're coming back at all. I'll be in quite a sore position."

He smiled a smile she wouldn't mind peeling off his face. "I'm sure a civilized girl like yourself can hold up." Sokka paused and then smiled slightly. "Just don't burn me when I come back, alright?" He meant it as a tease but she could tell he was partly serious.

She smiled. "No promises."

"Fine," he said curtly and stood. "I'm going to eat. Let me know if you need anything moved closer to you."

"Get the rest of that sled in here and whatever else you can spare to burn. I can't stand that green light."

"The fire won't last as long as I'm gone," he warned.

"It doesn't need to," she said, her voice like a whip. "Put some of the goo by the cavern entrance then, but keep it away from me. It gives me headaches."

He did as she asked before settling into his mushroom meal, making scarfing sounds that reminded her of the gibbering.

To be continued...


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

The green light from Sokka's fungus lantern was potent enough to keep him from stumbling. It gave the shrouded rocks around him a slick shine, and he could almost see why Azula didn't like the green tone it cast over everything. He didn't know how long he had been walking but noted the air kept a constant temperature and was not too dry, so he did not need to drink much or eat heavily from his store of mushrooms.

He stopped abruptly when the green light to his sides stopped being reflected off the walls and was swallowed up by blackness. He felt as though he were standing on the edge of a canyon at night and that the dark wall in front of him would either draw him in or fall forward and crush him. Senses he could not name reported to his brain an that immense empty space was before him.

He crouched, noting the way the sounds of his minute movement echoed, and took out Hoplo's journal. The man's drawings indicated a slight expanse of the tunnel where Sokka should be, but a notation in the margin told Sokka he should turn to another page, which he did. Whistling in the dark, Sokka saw that, according to Hoplo, he was on the edge of a gigantic cavern, one large enough to encompass a small city if the dead explorer was correct in his calculations.

Sokka studied the map more closely, remembering Hoplo's frantic scribblings mentioning a city, and saw that there were many tunnels running outward from the big cavern, as though this one was a hub, some sort of crossroads, perhaps? The one he wanted was nearby and would take him to another underground river and upward on a slope to where Hoplo had entered the caverns.

Thinking now was a good time to rest, Sokka moved to the edge of the tunnel's exit and sat down. He gave his fungus lantern some water, and it glowed brilliantly, infecting him with the mad thought that it would be nothing more than a beacon announcing his presence in the cavern for all to see. He drew the shutter on the lantern, feeling foolish but safer in the dark.

He guessed he had been traveling for at least two days. Without the sun to tell time, he had to go by bodily functions. The constant blackness, broken only by false green light, a perversion of daylight in this strange place, carried a kind of weight to it that made him sympathize more with Azula while at the same time making him think that what she'd seen attacking her was a trick of prolonged exposure to the weird green color.

"Explains why Hoplo went nuts down here," he whispered so he could hear something besides distant water and his footsteps. "But don't forget he said some went crazy before they got here."

He didn't want to talk to himself too much, thinking that was also an invitation for madness, and he took out his bag of mushrooms and began eating to occupy his mind. He smelled the mushrooms before eating them and as usual detected no trace of the foul odor he'd inhaled at the campsite where Azula claimed to have burned a monster. He had used a little fire of his own to burn a bit of the glowing fungus as well as some of the cave's rocks but had been unable to reproduce the smell.

Sokka almost felt bad about leaving her alone with an injured leg, but he suspected she was safer than he was now, assuming there was a monster at all.

"Alright, Sokka, time to stop fooling yourself," he whispered. "You know something is down here; it all adds up. Hoplo's journal, Azula's dreams, the burning smell...only question is did she scare it off or just make it mad?"

He noticed his voice was being picked up by the cavern and sent echoing in the strangest of ways. He thought there had to be something odd about the cavern with the way his voice was being distorted, so he took a pebble and tossed it into the dark, furrowing his brow as he heard it bounce off something close by.

Sokka took his lantern and went forward until the green light fell on a large gray- colored boulder. For a moment he stared at it, wondering what was wrong, and then he noticed. It was no boulder shaped by nature but rather a smooth dome. Following it around, he saw that it had clearly been worked by tools and was the size of a modest house.

He followed the edge and eventually located an arched doorway tall enough to admit a grown man standing on another's shoulders. Sokka peered inside and saw it was desolate, with nothing more than another arched doorway that seemed to lead into a hallway or room.

He entered slowly, looking around as if the roof would fall on his head, and crept to the other doorway. It went into a low, dimly-lit hallway, and following it, he came into another room that looked just like the one he'd been in. Here there were two doors. He took the one on the left and traveled a few minutes before he realized he was back outside.

Forcing back the panic and dread that threatened to unleash themselves from deep in his stomach, he found the door he had last come through and retraced his steps. It was a few harrowing seconds before he once again found the initial entrance to the big cavern, and there he stopped to consult Hoplo's journal again.

As he looked at it, he encountered a recurring problem he had been having with it. What he would take for scribbles and stains during one reading would turn out to be faint footnotes when he looked again, making what he had taken for a simple map actually something quite complicated. Studying it no, his head began to throb, his headache made even worse by the sickly green light he was using to read. He turned the map sideways and suddenly felt dizzy.

"What the..." Sokka he muttered, fighting a wave of crushing nausea. "Oh no. Oh no, no, no, this isn't good." He was talking loud, heedless of both how loud and desperate his voice sounded in the dark and how the echoes of his words were so unlike the ones from his scuffing footsteps. All his attention was on the journal with its cavern map being spread across several pages. He had noticed the passages contained numbers at their ends which corresponded to other numbers on other pages, indicating how the map should be read.

How he was reading the map now was not the way he had been reading it before.

The nausea was replaced by a dry throat and inability to swallow as he saw what he'd first taken for a smudge was really its own dash mark, making the letter a different one than he'd thought. It didn't help that Hoplo's handwriting was either archaic, not very good, or both.

"Crap, so if this is this, and that one is that, one, then that means..."

When he found the right page, he almost couldn't believe it. He was indeed in a large cavern but not one that housed a small city. If Hoplo's drawings and measurements were right, and Sokka could not completely believe that they were, Ba Sing Se could have fit snugly into the cavern had some earthbenders the mind and might to move it.

The notes Hoplo wrote reeked of madness but Sokka could see that the man believed his words.

"A city," they read, scribbled sideways in the margins and anywhere Hoplo could find space. "Layout all wrong. No, different. Dense. How high is the ceiling? Counted three Great Pillars. Where are the builders?"

The other notes he couldn't read, but it was clear Hoplo had lost it by then. Sokka felt he might join the man in madness, as his being in the city meant that he was slightly off course from where he wanted to go.

After another minute of studying the map and five spent checking his interpretation, he let the journal flop against his knee. "Great, just great," he said, defeat and anger ringing through his tone. "That's another day I've lost."

This time, he did pay attention to the echo that took what he said and repeated it throughout the city. He was quiet for a moment, listening to it travel for far too long.

"Hellooo," he called, and was shocked to heard what sounded like someone repeating it who was in turn repeated by another, and so on.

He picked up a rock and threw it. It clattered flatly against something solid.

Sokka then cleared his throat and shouted, "My name is Bonzu Pippinpaddle-Oppsokopolis!"

As the phrase "My name is Bonzu Pippinpaddle-Oppsokopolis," was loudly and clearly repeated word-for-word through the black void with the pronunciation of Pippinpaddle-Oppsokopolis becoming slightly distorted the farther out it got, Sokka rose to his feet. He kept his lantern pointed low and ran down the passage as fast as he dared, wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and the city with no echoes.

To be continued...


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

Azula's eyes rolled around in her head, searching for the source of what had woken her from a fitful sleep. The egg-shaped ceiling of the cave was half lit by the green fungus light, while the other half directly above her was black, swirling, and gibbering.

Azula's only movement was to blink hard in an effort to clear the sleep from her eyes and mind. It had become hard to distinguish reality from dream, but when her leg sent her a jolt of pain, she knew she was awake and that the monstrous thing had come back. She threw her blankets off and began to crawl across the cave floor, towards the green light she hated, and out from under the black mass. Her leg punished her for the movement, but she as glad when she heard a loud plop as part of the thing dripped free of the ceiling.

She rolled onto her back and sent a gentle ball of blue fire towards the pile of wood Sokka had left. The fire only jostled the sticks a little, but they still caught and turned orange, illuminating the rest of the cave where the green light didn't reach, all save the dripping blackness which seemed to absorb light.

The thing had spread to cover the ceiling above where she had been. Its swirling became more violent, and more of it distended and dripped onto the floor. Azula forced herself to look at it, to make sense of it, and could not. It was like water, or mud, and boiled in places, which seemed responsible for the gibbering sound she could hear. The bubbles she realized were like tiny puckering lips that formed to make a single sound before disappearing.

Most of it had now dripped to the floor and coagulated, rising like porridge left on the stove too long. As it started oozing forward, it twitched, flinging clumps of dirt at her fire. Seeing it feared the flames and was trying to douse them, Azula sat up and took a deep breath before firing twin jets of flame from her palms. There was black smoke, a foul stench, and a squealing noise as the thing kicked more dirt in her direction.

-It hates fire, I can beat it,- she thought, doubling her efforts to make it burn.

When her blue flames turned orange and died out, and her breaths came in pained wheezes, she felt herself turn cold. Behind her were the caverns as well as the path that led up to the cave's entrance and the snowfield outside. She began to drag herself towards the slope but veered off towards the caverns when she thought about freezing to death outside, especially now that her bending was virtually useless.

When she reached the tunnel, she crawled against the wall and used her good leg to push herself up. Looking back, she could see the creature was still battling the fire, but it was a fight the thing would soon win. The sight of it writhing in the dirt almost made her rethink freezing to death, but instead she moved deeper into the dark, trying to keep from crying out.

She had no idea how the thing sensed the world around it, and hoped that by finding some nook or cranny in the caverns to crawl into, she could avoid its attention. She was able to muster some fire between her fingers, and the light showed her a mirror-like surface on the floor up ahead and to her left.

"Water," she whispered.

She doused her light and fell to the floor, making a gulping sound as she swallowed a scream. With her fire light, out she saw the pool was ringed on the far side with more of the green flowing fungus. She crawled towards it and slipped into the cold cave water like an alligator-eel, making as little noise as possible despite her disgust. The pool became deep after only a few feet and she used her uninjured leg to pushed herself along against the bottom. When the water was what would have been chest-height had she been standing, she stopped and turned, tilting her head back so her nostrils were above the water.

The gibbering noise filled the cavern, and in the fungus light she saw the black mass moving along the passage. Part of it touched the pool, making the water ripple, but there was no splashing. Its babbling noise became fainter as it moved on, back the way it had come, but she kept still despite the realization her wounded leg was now soaking in cave water. The damage was done in that respect, and she feared the thing might double back too much to do anything about it.

Azula thought she might as well stay in the water as long as she could or until she heard Sokka coming back.

-Maybe it got him...strange I didn't think of that,- she thought, now angry.

Other thoughts began swirling in her mind. How had the monster found them? How had she known the water would conceal her? The information seemed to be from half-remembered nightmares, but these thoughts soon gave way to the knowledge that her survival depended on the Water Tribe boy's return.

When the chill of the water had permeated her to the core and her skin had pruned to the point where it was painful to make a fist, she decided the black mass was not going to return, and swam to the shore.

The thing had doused the firewood in sand, and she struggled to clear off the top layer. She needed heat to dry herself, and the sight of the green light made her want to vomit more than usual. She sat next to the flames, facing the entrance to the caverns, and set her bandaged leg where it would get the most heat. The wrappings were wet, but they thankfully had not been disturbed. She wondered if she would be able to walk on her own by the time she left the caverns. Part of her wanted the time to heal, and the other part wanted to be gone, injured or not.

She held her nose and breathed through her mouth. The stench that hung in the air was powerful enough for her to think the Water Tribe boy would have to believe there was a monster now, even if his time in the caverns had been uneventful, and she doubted that would be the case.

-Maybe it got him already,- she thought again.

Azula laid back down and tried to rest and clear her mind without falling asleep. The sight of her flames petering out in the middle of battle floated mockingly in the front of her mind and became more vivid when she closed her eyes.

-That can't happen again, it can't,- she told herself. -I have to be perfect.-

She chuckled. It was a soft sound, drowned out by the crackling wood fire. She desperately wanted the Water Tribe boy to come back, to hear his stupid voice and his see his barbaric, plodding gate. She laughed a little louder, wondering just what difference his presence would make if the black, gibbering thing came back.

To be continued...


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

Sokka was struggling to make it up the slope. Loose rocks went clattering down behind him, but the sight of faint daylight above gave vitality to his limbs, which helped him pull his straining body free of the warm darkness bellow and behind him, which seemed to cling to him and didn't want to let him go. When he reached the light, he cried out and felt like he'd gone face first into an icy pond. The feeling cleansed him of the warm, sticky sensation the caverns had covered him in, though, and he took a handful of hard snow and pressed his face into it.

He sank to his knees when the feeling was gone. That was all it had been, a mental construct, as there was nothing on his body but his clothes, dirt, and sweat. Exhaustion overtook him, and his last movement before collapsing was to turn to face the cave, loathe as he was to look at it. Satisfied nothing was coming up behind him, he lay flat on his back, only dimly aware he had reached his destination. His main worry now was how he was ever going to muster the courage to make the return trip. -And then make it at least one more time,- he thought.

"Maybe I wasn't really being chased," he said, savoring the sounds of his words in the crisp air without hearing them repeated and distorted.

After he left the city he had, in what was perhaps the most courageous moment of his life, stopped to take his bearings using Hoplo's journal. It had not been easy, given that the false echoes were intensifying and coming closer, repeating words and phrases he had said and some he had not. There were other sounds that were like words and maybe they were, only in languages people didn't speak anymore, or had never spoken at all.

Hoplo's ravings and musings didn't sound so mad now, and as the snow began to make the back of his head ache, he thought they actually made a fair bit of sense.

-People say all life is connected,- Sokka thought. -Well it looks like some of it is pretty disconnected, I'd say-

He wondered what the swamp people, the vine benders, would have to say about this. He wondered what Aang might have to say about this. Sokka knew what he himself would say, that as far as life went, this place was an infected boil on the butt cheek of the world. He wanted to vomit thinking of the mushrooms he'd eaten, but he steadfastly held the bile in. He would need his strength from that loathsome food, so he had better get used to it.

Sitting up, he took out Hoplo's journal and read it by the dull sunlight that came in through the narrow top of the crevasse. The scribblings were faint and difficult to read, but now that he knew they weren't the result of madness, he studied them harder, taking in their meaning.

"The city proper is massive, and I shudder to think how many dwellings might be in the tunnels that branch away from it," Hoplo wrote in a tight, frantic script. "Curse this pervasive darkness. I wish I could see the structures better. How ancient they are I can not determine. Scientific protocol be damned! These buildings predate anything built by man by eons. I can feel it when I look at them. They are all intact, and I have seen no signs of violence, no bodies, no furniture, no shrines. Nothing. Everything has a scoured look to it. Free of weather, one would expect corrosion in a place like this to be minimal over time. A testament to how old all this must be. I know not what built this place or what dwelled within it, but I know they are not here now, and I know they were not human."

Sokka flipped through more entries and suspected that by this time, Hoplo hadn't been very careful about where in his journal is entries were made, as he discovered some new ones in what he had thought were blank pages beyond the supposed final entry. Some seemed to show great distress and madness well before rational descriptions of fungus and cave features. In some places, he'd scrawled over such descriptions. "They farmed it!" Hoplo wrote over a passage about another type of edible mushroom Sokka had not come across.

Sokka's mouth became a tight line of frustration. All this he had deduced himself for the most part, but his eyes perked up, and he felt colder when he came across a tiny paragraph Hoplo had made at the end of his journal, past several blank pages. Clearly, he'd lost all care as to where his entries landed.

"The Pnakotic Fragments. The only explanation. The Old Ones. They are real, the Fragments are truth! They baited us. Their servants. The only things left. That slithering sound, those noises, repeating the voices of their old masters and now...mine!"

"Slithering sound," Sokka read the words aloud and thought he might vomit on the journal. There was only one other word to read. It had been scratched at the bottom of the page. A nonsense word. "Shoggoth."

Sokka didn't ponder long over it, hating how the word sounded in his mind. He had no desire to say it aloud, having the mad fear it would taint his lips, his mouth, his throat, all the way down to his lungs. He looked up from the journal, hating it despite how helpful it had been, and grimaced at the top edge of the crevasse. It was a few hundred feet up, and he surmised that either the explorers had come from father down its winding path or used bending to reach the bottom. Either way, he thought he could safely launch a balloon from here if he got one built.

He slapped a pile of snow and stood up, feeling as rested as he was likely to ever get.

"Guess it all makes sense now," he said, thinking of stories Gran Gran had told him about fish that lived at the bottom of the dark ocean that wore glowing lanterns on their heads to lure other fish to their mouths.

These fish, Gran Gran had said, were more hideous than anything imaginable, having lived so long where seeing and good looks didn't matter so much. This had not been a fairy tale, Sokka remembered. Waterbenders of old had often explored the deep seas using their bending, but many of their discoveries had been lost over the years. Perhaps they didn't like what they'd found, Sokka had always thought.

"I guess I know the feeling," he said and studied the snowy area he'd come into more closely. "What's all this?" There were bits of wood sticking up from the snow.

Using his boomerang to clear it away, Sokka quickly discovered that the expedition's camp had been set up right here, not farther back. That it was even here at all both surprised him and gave him an idea.

He began digging frantically, hoping reality would nurture the tiny notion in his mind and help it grow. After much digging, he uncovered the top part of a tent that had collapsed, and ignoring the odds and ends that had lain under it for nearly two centuries, he pried loose one of he poles and proceeded to try and break it. After some exertion, he heard the faint crackle of breaking wood fibers and stopped.

"Oh, yeah!" he exclaimed joyfully, digging free more of the poles.

Some had become brittle, but many of the thicker ones held their flexibility. Most of the larger pieces were wood, but more digging brought up a few whale-seal bones. With the canvass he recovered from the airship, Sokka though he could design and build balloon that would get them up and away from these horrible mountains without having to drag the sled full of debris through monster-infested caverns with an injured firebender in tow.

"You gotta hand it to the Northern Water Tribe, they build stuff to last," Sokka said, his rising good mood tempered severely by the dark creeping down from above as the sun moved to the far end of the sky at an angle where it's light was hard pressed to shine down into the crevasse.

He looked back into downward sloping tunnel, and listened carefully for what sounded like people murmuring or something heaving dragging itself over loose rocks.

"Forget her," he said, the notion coming to him so quickly that he spoke before thinking it through. "After all she's done, she deserves it."

The words felt good to say, but he knew they were hollow and stupid.

"I can't do this without a firebender," he said with a sigh, preferring to feel sensible rather than pity a girl he hated. A new thought hit him and made him crouch with Hoplo's journal and a piece of charcoal. On a blank page he sketched a map using the scattered notes from the journal.

-All the info I need in one place,- he thought. -That should make the return trip faster. Hopefully, those things haven't gotten her yet.-

He forced down more of the cave mushrooms, filled his water skins with snow, and gave some of the water to the glowing fungus he carried in the lantern. The fungus didn't seem to appreciate the cold much, but it perked up in the warm caves.

-And if those things are after her, just what am I supposed to do about it?- he wondered, jogging through rocky tunnels and stopping only briefly to consult his notes.

To be continued...


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Azula was on her back, gritting her teeth and trying to push the pain from her mind. It was like a flame with its core at her wounded leg, and it was slowly creeping over her limbs, up her trunk, and into her brain, turning everything to brittle charcoal. She had changed the bandage and retied the splint on her own. The splint was not as tight as Sokka had made it; her strength had given out too soon, but it was tight enough to hold the bone straight.

The real fire by which Azula had done her operation was now dim coals. The smell of smoke hung over her, much of it being caught in the cave's ceiling and the rest pulled out of the cave's entrance by the cold air. It had mixed with the stink given off the by the burned monster, and the air was now somewhat pleasant.

Some of the glowing fungus was still by the cavern entrance. The rest Azula had moved closer, wanting the ability to see without firebending. The light was still nauseating, but she thought she was getting used to it. Having heard no sign of the monster's return, she had allowed herself a bit of sleep and found it largely undisturbed by slithering noises. Only pain, her mother, and random things filled her sleeping mind now.

She had no idea how much time had passed. Her injuries and poor diet had thrown off her body's system, so it was of little use in gauging the passage of hours and days. She did her best, however, and determined that the Water Tribe boy was a little late. She busied herself making a game plan for the event he didn't come back. When she would enact it she couldn't say, but her notions now involved trying to reach the airship and waiting for help as long as she could, doing whatever she had to do to keep alive.

These plans did little to cheer her, so she started to think about what she would do once she got back to the Fire Nation. Once the war was won, she figured a team of elite firebenders could sweep these caverns clear of any nasty things that might dwell within. She would lead the raid herself. If the things that lived here knew enough to lure her in like they did, perhaps they would also appreciate being wiped out by her as well.

-It'll have to be quite a team,- she thought. -I was obviously singled out by the things because of my higher thought functions, which would explain what happened to this Hoplo and his scholar friends. They were too weak to bear it, but I'm not. Perhaps a group of less thoughtful firebenders would be best. The Water Tribe boy doesn't seem affected.-

Her final thought was that this place had been undisturbed for two-hundred years and perhaps millions before that, and maybe it was best forgotten about by all involved. Her meditations were broken by a noise from the caverns, one that made her chest become light. It was the sound of haggard feet scuffling over loose stones.

His drawn face, illuminated by that maddening green light, told her all she needed to know. He believed. There would be no expedition into the caverns, and they would soon be going to the downed airship to either build a balloon or wait.

"Get ready, we're going," he said curtly.

"I'm always ready," she responded, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

"Good," he said, going around the camp and gathering their things. He used some canvass and blankets to fashion a rucksack, which he slung over his chest like a large bib or baby carrier. "Okay, so I was thinking about it, and I think the best way to do this is for you to hop on my back. Your leg might get hurt again, but we gotta get out of here."

Her eyes went wide, then narrowed. Something was wrong. "What's wrong with the sled you dragged me here in to start with?" she asked him suspiciously.

"It's too slow and bulky. I know the way through the caverns pretty good now. I stopped to rest an hour ago and I think I can make pretty good time even with you on my back." He was confident, and he rolled his shoulders a few times, probably stretching them to better prepare himself for Azula's weight.

She couldn't think of anything to say for a long moment, during which Sokka began to double check the camp for things he might want and to discard what he didn't need. He seemed reluctant as to how to approach picking her up and finally stopped to stand over her. It was then he appeared to sense her apprehension.

"Oh, I forgot to say, I found what was left of Hoplo's camp at the crevasse. There's enough stuff to build a balloon with so all I have to carry is our supplies, you, and the canvass."

"So you didn't see it after all, then," she said. She admittedly felt a bit disappointed that he would remain a skeptic.

"Oh, I did," Sokka responded heavily. "And I wouldn't say it, I'd say them. We need to get moving yesterday, I think they're on the warpath."

"I know!" She waved her hand around her. "Look!"

He looked around the cave, and his nostrils flared before crinkling. "It came back?"

"Yes it came back!" she shouted desperately, mentally begging the peasant to believe her. "I managed to fight it off, barely. I had to hide in the pool."

"Your leg..." Concern laced his tone and it irritated her.

"It's fine," she said dismissively. "I changed the bandage myself." She paused and then fixed Sokka with a glare. "If you think I'm going with you into those caverns, you're insane."

"We've been over this," he said impatiently. "We can't launch a balloon from this side of the mountain, or the winds will smash us into the rocks."

"Forget flying," she said, waving her hand. "We take as much food as we can carry from here back to the airship where we work to make the crash site visible. Then we wait to be rescued. It will take time, but someone will come."

Sokka shook his head and seemed to be fighting the urge to raise his voice. "Summer might be over by the time help finds us, and in the meantime we risk a Deep Cold each and every day. One that might last days this time instead of half of one. We can't survive that. Make the crash site visible? How many huge blizzards did you count in the time we were there? How long before we're buried? I'll tell you right now that it wasn't easy finding the airship last time I went out. As for food, I'll have to go back into those caverns anyway to get it. Unless you think those men who died in the crash are tastier than they look."

She looked past the green light into the black hole of the cavern entrance and felt cold. "You need me to heat the air in the balloon, so I'm the one in charge," she said, folding her arms in the most regal manner she could muster.

She didn't like the grin that spread over his face. "Oh are you?" he said with a harsh bark of derision. "Well in that case, maybe I will forget about the balloon. I'll make my way over to that ice flow on my two working legs. I bet I can get pretty far, eating tiger-seals. Maybe I'll run across a few polar dogs and hitch 'em to a sled to pull me."

She smiled back at him in the same cruel, condescending way he had, knowing his last remark was a sign he had no such plan. "Then I guess this is where we part company, peasant," she said with a nonchalant shrug. "Leave me some food."

"Take all of it," he said, dropping a bundle unceremoniously next to her feet. "I can get more, there's a wall full of those nasty mushrooms near the exit on the other side."

"How many times do you think you can get through there without those things trapping you?" she asked him seriously. He would have to stop bluffing sooner or later.

"I think my odds are pretty good if I'm alone," he said, his expression unreadable and his voice relaxed. "They're like big leech-slugs. They're not very sneaky and you can slip around them if you're quick. Not so much if you're crippled on the ground."

"I've fought one off twice now," she retorted. "But I'm sure if you're cornered you can always 'boomerang' one to death."

He laughed, and she saw him drop the canvass he needed for a balloon. "This is too bad, I was looking forward to us both getting out of here. I mean, I don't like you. At all. Don't get me wrong, but we've...shared some experiences. If this is where it ends, that's up to you."

"Oh, drop the act, savage, we both know you're not leaving me here."

"Savage," he said, as though having discovered something. "Yes! I am a savage, aren't I? Fit only to be rounded up by soldiers and tossed in a camp somewhere, right? Wait, that wasn't me, that was my mother." He paused, his breathing coming harshly now. "Did I ever tell you about that? The day people like you showed up at my village and took my mom?"

His voice had become low and heavy and held a hint of mania. She scanned his face, still thinking this was another element to his bluff, but something made her uncertain. Perhaps it was the thought of her own mother, who she hadn't seen in years and doubted she'd ever see again outside her dreams.

-And whose fault is that?- she now asked herself, perhaps for the first time while fully awake. -Father's? Grandfather's?-

The day she'd overheard her grandfather telling her father that he had to kill one of his own children was an important one. It had made her see just what one could do when they had power, and what her father and mother had done in response had also shown her that there was a limit to power. Later, she'd revised her opinion. There was no limit with power such as that, but one had to be careful about what slipped around the edges. Azulon, her grandfather, had assumed his son would do as he was told, either out of fear or obedience.

-Squeeze a grape too hard,- she thought -and you'll end up with grape juice on your robe.- She looked into Sokka's eyes and thought he could stand a little more squeezing yet.

"Well," she said airily, as though having reached the end of a particularly boring social visit. "I suppose if that's how you feel, off with you then. If you decide you've made a terrible mistake, come back and I'll be here, or dead in the snow somewhere out there. I'm afraid being frozen to death interferes with my bending somewhat, but we shall see."

"Fine," Sokka said coldly. "Have a nice life."

She watched him stride purposefully towards the caverns with their supplies, past the dimming green fungus light. No sooner had the faded blue of his coat disappeared did she feel a surprise burst of panic, as though that grape she'd been thinking of had popped suddenly, sending its innards everywhere. She held her tongue, thinking if she could just wait a minute or so the panic would fade. It did, only it became something worse. Despair.

She sometimes felt like this when she destroyed something beautiful. Her uncle had given her a doll once, and, angry her brother had received an ornate dagger, she set the doll ablaze. It had felt good, almost rewarding, to watch it burn, but the act had come with a twinge of something like regret. It only lasted the few seconds it took the doll to go from being pretty to being completely ruined, and she'd been left with satisfaction then. It was a dim emotion compared to the indignation she'd felt over the lame gift, but later in the night she thought Ty Lee might have liked the doll, and it would have been fun to make her do something silly in order to get it.

Azula felt the same way now, only at a magnitude that made it all but incomparable to that time before. "Alright, fine!" she shrieked, not liking the way her voice echoed. "You've made your point, savage! Get back here!"

There was no response, and the only thing that kept her from wailing was wanting to die with some dignity, despite there being no one around to note it.

"Hey! I know you can hear me, you Water Tribe peasant! You fool, you need me! You need me! Sokka!"

She slapped herself when she felt tears well up in her eyes, and when she heard his footsteps approaching, she thought she may have done herself some serious internal injury by choking back her emotions.

"No more stupid games," Sokka said, not noting her heavy breathing and deadly stare.

She looked up at him, thinking she might like to still argue out of spite, but saw in his face that would be foolish. He had been serious just now, and it he'd come back from the same brink she had.

"Just so you know," he said calmly, in a tone of authority she had not heard from him before. "I wasn't bluffing just now, and I won't be from now on. You do what I say or else."

She looked at him with a cold stare in her eyes and something like a smile on her lips. Something had changed him recently, and she wondered by how much.

"Or else what?" she baited. "Say it."

"I don't have to," he said. "Why are you messing with me like this?"

"Because if we do get through this, you'll still be my enemy and I want to know what you're made of," she told him. "You know you've got potential, Sokka. Everything you've done, I'm not sure many grown men could have done it half as well. You'd make a good leader if given the right opportunity."

His eyebrow went up at her almost-compliment, and she also wondered what she was doing. Was he someone who could be made to see reason? The hardships of war had hardened many hearts against the Fire Nation, and it seemed his was as hard as any.

"I know you've suffered at the hands of the Fire Nation, and I can't erase that, but based on your experiences in the Earth Kingdom, can you say we're all that bad?"

"It wasn't earthbenders who kidnapped my people and murdered my mother," said Sokka, and Azula could hear from the tightness of his voice that he was still roiling with anger. "And they didn't wipe out the Air Nomads, either. And they sure as heck didn't put a bolt of lighting through my best friend's back."

"You won't believe it, but I'm sorry that had to happen," she said, ignoring the way he rolled his eyes. "I'm not sorry I did it, I'm just sorry the Avatar didn't join us in uniting the world."

"Uniting the...come on," he spat. "Let's go, I think this conversation is making me stupider."

"You saw the government in Ba Sing Se," Azula said, still trying to convince him despite herself. "For the sake of argument, I'll say you're right and that the things my family...the Fire Nation, has done are evil and wrong. There's a noble purpose behind all of it. Rather than fight it against it and make more problems, wouldn't it make more sense to join us and perhaps guide our efforts with the other nations?"

He squatted next to her, adjusting her bandage and making her wince. "Hearing you talk, the things you say, the ideas you have, I think I might have about as much in common with you as I do those things in there. In fact, I think you and those things are a lot alike, only I might like them more only because I know what to expect from 'em. What you just said to me was maybe the dumbest thing I've ever heard, so do me a favor and shut up from here on out, okay?"

She let her smile fade and cocked her head to the side. "Have it your way," she said, pausing to let her words echo a little. "But we won't need each other forever and when that happens just remember the choice you made today."

He scoffed dismissively. "There was never a choice to make. Now if you're done babbling, let's go. I'll help you stand, and you can get on my back. We'll go piggy-back style so you can shoot fire if you need to. How's your bending?"

"Good as ever," she said, deciding she would force her ability to meet the claim if need be. Shifting her weight beneath her good leg, she got to her feet with his help. "Bump my leg and you won't forget it."

"I'd like to forget you as much as possible, so I'll be careful," he retorted, hanging the rucksack around his neck while getting down to one knee.

She hopped and went onto his back, feeling his muscles lift her up while he hooked his arms beneath her knees. She hung both arms over his shoulders and nudged herself high in his back so her arms would be as far from his face as possible if she had to shoot flames from her hands. Her leg stuck out to his side a little farther than the other, and she knew it was going to get jostled.

"Ready?" he asked, his voice already slightly strained.

"Yip yip," she said, hoping that was the right phrase. A shake of his head told her it was.

To be continued...


	21. Part III: Escape from the Mountains of Madness

Chapter Twenty-One

Sokka felt as though he were plowing through deep snow, but all that greeted his stumbles were harsh gravel and sharp rocks. Beads of sweat poured down his temples, following the curve of his jaw, and a thick layer of moisture had built up between his skin and inner clothes, making him feel scummy as well as fatigued. He had to keep alert so he wouldn't get lost in the dark, winding caves, so he was unable to take refuge in mindless drudgery the way he had when crossing the snowfield for the first time. Every so often, a bolt of blue flame would appear behind his head and go sailing off towards a real or possibly imagined enemy, reminding him of the hazards of stopping or losing his way.

Finally, it came to the point where his legs refused to obey him, and his knees would not rise high enough to make a successful step forward. He went down faster than he'd wanted, and Azula yelped and cursed as she slid off his back.

"What are you doing?!" she shouted, her voice filled with pain bordering on panic. "They're all around us! We can't stop!"

Pain now wracked his body, causing his extremities to feel heavier than he'd ever felt them. His muscles, having been given a brief reprieve, now refused to respond and were punishing him for trying to make them move. The warm air of the caves had taken its toll, too, and he felt as though his furs were an oven. He tore off his coat and felt the heat waft off his moist torso.

"I...can't...need to rest," he panted, still hunched over.

Azula growled and hurled a bolt of fire in the direction they'd come. He saw the black rock walls glow blue and heard the flame strike something solid not far back. He could smell charred rocks but couldn't detect the foul odor of burning cave monster.

"How much farther is it?" she asked, sounding both weary and irritated.

The area lit by the lantern looked the same as everything else, and he forced himself to remember the landmarks he had passed: The cave with the dip in the floor, the tunnel that kept getting narrow then wider in regular intervals; next should be an open area with one wall covered in cold water. Beyond that would be a small pool with some of the glowing fungus, and past that would be what he dreaded now, a series of winding tunnels that would require a flawless memory of which turns to take to traverse.

-First left, second right, then two more lefts, right, left,- he thought in a sing-song voice, the way he'd been taught to remember long sequences by Gran Gran. He reached for Hoplo's journal and felt its solid cover in the rucksack. Knowing he could consult it if need be was a comfort, but he didn't want to have to stop for that long.

The tunnel was silent. All he could hear were the blood pounding in his ears and Azula's hisses of discomfort.

"I asked you how much farther!" she said.

"A while. But I can't keep this pace up," he replied, the exhaustion already seeking to overwhelm him.

"Well you'd better. I'm all but sure those things are working towards a trap."

He let out a deep sigh and admitted to himself that he had underestimated how difficult carrying the supplies and Azula would be. It was not at all like dragging a sled over the snowfield, where the only exertion had come from from shuffling forward. Carrying her and their things put his body under constant strain.

"Up! Up, now!" Azula shouted, throwing fire in a seemingly random direction.

He heard something sizzle when the bolts struck and the smell of strange, burning flesh wafted over him. Sokka turned to see something not quite solid filling the passage, oozing forward. Azula's blue flames illuminated it before snuffing out on impact. If the thing felt pain, it didn't show it.

"Go, it's coming!" Azula shouted again, sliding backward frantically, uncaring of the rocks as they scratched her bare hands.

This was it, he thought, this was the thing's trap. It had harried them until they were too tired to move, and now it was putting on a rush of speed and ignoring the injuries dealt to it, knowing there would soon be nothing left to harm it. Fear came over him like a scalding bucket of water, burning his nerves away so he felt no pain and was able to get to his feet. It was like his limbs had been infused with a bolt of lighting. He threw the rucksack on over his open coat, grabbed the lantern and knelt beside Azula.

"Hop on!" he shouted, hoping she would be possessed by the same fear he was.

She fired a large ball of flame before crawling into him, shrieking as she did so from the agony that shot through her leg.

He lifted her without caution and heard her whimper. He could sense the massive being behind him was within meters, close enough to perhaps snatch him in one quick spurt. His limbs didn't feel heavy anymore, but he could tell they had been pushed to their limits. He gritted his teeth and willed his legs to move.

He felt as though he had gone to sleep and was dreaming. Distant sensations of pain still plagued him, as did idle, random thoughts that swam up from the void beneath his mind. Katara's hair loops, the Earth Kingdom as it looked from the air, the smell of Suki's war paint, all rose up and burst on the surface of his consciousness like bubbles from the muddy bottom of a lake. He couldn't see the black tunnel, as it was lit partially by a green light which would occasionally become flickering and blue, or orange.

Reality came back to him in the form of dusty, hard stone scuffing his cheek. He felt the warm sting of broken skin and the sticky smear of blood when he moved his head to the side so he could breathe.

"Ow..." he said, knowing his legs would not work now, no matter what fear spurred them on.

He felt Azula's weight on top of him and her breath in his hear. "Are you alive?" she whispered. Her voice shook and he felt warm drops of her sweat on his cheek.

"I think so," he said, his words slurred and weak.

"Keep quiet. I managed to slow it down. We got ahead. It might not know where we are."

All he wanted to do was sleep, or at least not move as even sleeping seemed like too much an effort. His legs and back ached even when he didn't move, and screamed at him when he did. "Where are we?" he whispered.

"I don't know. You seemed like you knew where you were going." Her voice held an accusatory sting, but Sokka was too tired to retort.

"I did?" he mumbled, picking his head up.

Everything was black, and he remembered almost nothing of his mad flight. He put his hand on the floor and ran his tired fingers along the rock, remembering that different parts of the caverns had their own surfaces. Some with loose stone, others with hard, sharp rocks. This surface was smooth and covered in fine dust.

"Oh crap," he said, suddenly feeling more alert due to his growing fear.

"What is it? Are we lost?"

He shook his head, realizing seconds after he did so that she wouldn't be able to see it in the gloom. "No...worse, we're at the city."

"The cit...where they live!?" Her voice had risen from a cautious whisper to a near shriek.

"I guess...I don't know where we are in it...it's huge. And what happened to being quiet?"

"Forget it," she said, waving her hand wearily. "I don't think they hear by sound alone, they sensed us out in the snow and lured me here with dreams, remember?"

"Whatever," he said with effort. "I can't move."

"You'll have to."

"I can't," Sokka said, wearily. "Not for a while. And probably nowhere near as fast. You're no feather, princess."

She looked about to say something in response to his comment about her weight but thought against it and settled for an exasperated hiss. "You...ugh. Well I can't drag you, so it seems this is where we make our last stand if they find us."

Sokka felt sleep coming up on him as his aches seem to die down, but he could still think. "You said..." It was hard for him to speak. "You said, when it went after you, you hid in the water...?"

"Yes," she said, sounding as though she'd caught on. "The water...it couldn't sense me through the water." Azula began dragging herself away, sucking in her breath as she went.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To...find...someplace better to hide," she said, her leg clearly hurting her. "I'll return. I need you, remember?"

"Whatever," he said, wondering how she would find him again the dark.

As his eyes drifted shut, he realized that he was too exhausted to care.

To be continued...


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

The void swallowed her as soon as she left the safety of the smooth, curved wall. She had not planned on traveling far, just enough to hear the sound of water, and then she would crawl back and hope the beasts didn't come upon them while the Water Tribe boy got his strength back. She listened carefully and stopped frequently, hearing only the throbbing in her ears of her own pounding heart.

She started to retrace her path and realized she had made a mistake in leaving the Water Tribe boy's side so hastily. She tried to blame fatigue for the misstep but had to admit she had been afraid and wanted the theoretical safety of water. She shook her head; now was not the time for self-critique. Her hand fell on the smooth, stone surface of the weird dome structure in which she had left the Water Tribe boy, and she followed it around to the opening and went inside.

It was empty.

Everything began to spin. This was supposed to be where the Water Tribe boy was; she had counted how many times her hand came down to pull her along the ground, and she had gone in a straight line.

-He should be here,- she thought.

She listened intently, her own heartbeat now coming as claps of thunder in the vast silence of the city, probably covering any sound the Water Tribe boy might be making.

She let her body's energy come to the tip of her index finger, where a small blue flame flickered to life, illuminating the area around her. She was inside the doorway of one of the dome houses, and outside was what appeared to be a street made up of curved walls set at irregular intervals. She looked at the floor to see where she'd dragged herself through the dust and saw with dismay that there wasn't much of it to have left a track in.

"Boy!" she shouted, recklessly, noting with some irritation that there was fear echoing in her voice. She heard no reply and didn't dare to try another yell. "Oh, this was stupid," she whispered, letting the flame go out. "He should have told me there was no water in this place."

She lie flat on her stomach with her head tilted towards the direction in which she thought she'd come. She could not have gone far from the boy, and when he moved she expected to hear him. He was likely unconscious from foolishly over-pacing himself. She waited for a long time, and when her ears did detect a sound that wasn't from her own body, it was the sound of something wet and heavy falling onto the floor behind her. Wreathing her hand in flame, she illuminated the interior of the domed building, revealing a black blob on the floor no larger than something a pack animal might leave in the street.

Azula looked up, but it was too late. Blackness descended on her, extinguishing her flame and weighing down on her like a cart full of mud. She struggled to crawl out the door, but the surprisingly strong thing held her, sticking to her flesh like tree sap holds an insect, only rather than holding her immobile, she felt the thing begin to move her. Her limbs were spread out down to her fingertips, and she felt her lips, nostrils, eyes, and ears being probed as well. The thing was under her clothes, causing agony to her leg.

It took a particular interest in her leg, in fact, oozing around her bandage, sensing it wasn't part of her body, and trying to find a way under it. Her teeth were shut tight against the gooey mass, barring it from her mouth for the time being, but it had cut off her ability to breathe and was sending a cascade of unpleasant sensations the deeper it went into her nose and ears.

She knew of one way out of this, and to preform it, she would need to relax and clear her mind. It was difficult, especially the clearing of the mind, but when it was done, something bizarre happened.

It began with the sound she'd heard in her dreams, a wet slithering noise which she could now feel, see, and taste. She could sense something inside her now, something alien. It was long, split halfway down its length and with three appendages at the opposite end. One was bulbous with thousands of tiny, inert tendrils sprouting from it while the other two went out at either side, each splitting into five points at the end. It was warm all over, but less so on the second skin that covered much of it, a skin which through more feeling she could tell was artificial.

She felt something like disgust as she beheld the thing, but she was curious as well. Aside from the folds beneath its second skin, it had a number of orifices that might, if probed deeply enough, unlock the animal's secrets.

Azula recoiled at the realization that the thing she was examining was her own body through something else's senses. In that moment, she understood everything, but it was too late. It was like losing her balance around a scummy turtle duck pond while showing off, and once she fell in, she recoiled from it in horror. Frantically, she cast her mind back, writhing to escape the pit of filth she'd fallen into.

Back in her own form, spots were exploding behind her eyelids, which the thing was now trying to pry open.

-Concentrate, relax, keep centered this time,- she thought, knowing she was going to meet a gruesome end if she didn't focus.

That was enough to sharpen her mind, and it cleaved through the barriers within her like a knife. She felt an eruption come from her stomach and spread through every limb in her body. The heat flowed and contained everything within her, every aggravation, anxiety, and fear she'd ever held, plus her sense of pride, love of success, and the intense joy she always felt when wielding power.

She barely hung onto consciousness as the energy poured from her in a burst of white flame. It gushed from her, out of her control, taking her beyond reality before bringing her back and dropping her hard on the floor. Dimly aware her leg was screaming at her, everything went black.

When she came to, she was only aware of the pain in her leg. Something was tugging at it. She tried to muster a flame to burn whatever it was but only succeeded in a long sigh.

"Hey," Sokka said, leaving her leg alone and coming closer to her head. "What happened? Are you alright?"

She felt drained. Not tired, exactly, but she knew she wouldn't be firebending in the near future. It was an effort to even think, and all she wanted was to go unconscious again to avoid feeling the hurt that coursed up her body.

"Where are we?" she asked weakly.

"One of the dome houses. I found you from the smell. What did you do in here?" His voice held both awe and curiosity, as well as something else that Azula couldn't place.

She took in a breath and could smell the acrid odor of burnt cave monster. "I...burnt one of them up," she said. "It dropped on me from the ceiling and enveloped me. I pulled all my energy up and out, and incinerated it." She tried to keep her voice from shaking as she recounted her experience, but failed.

"Yeah, you definitely killed it," he said. "Looks like it gave the others something to think about; they haven't attacked."

"My leg..." she said vaguely, patting her clothes. They felt different. Thinner, and the size was off.

"You torched your bandages," he said. "I replaced them, but the splint's not as good. Not like it matters, you haven't exactly been taking it easy."

"Why are my clothes different?"

She heard him clear his throat. "You, ah, burnt those off, too." His voice cracked awkwardly as he said this. "Don't worry, it was dark, I couldn't see," he assured quickly.

"Had to feel your way around, I bet," she said blandly, her mind fuzzy from half-remembered thoughts. "You can move now. We had better get going before those things, or what's left of them, try for me again."

"Uh, yeah, about that," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "This city we're in is pretty big, and I don't exactly know where we are. There's a couple ways out, but only one that takes us back to the passage we want. We have to find some way to get our bearings and find that passage."

She tried to summon a light to her fingertips but couldn't. The half realizations she'd made while her mind was away hung on her like a heavy blanket. She wanted to shake it off but couldn't no matter how she tried. She was two people now. One fighting to hold back the fearful knowledge she'd gained in the monster's embrace, the other providing automatic responses to Sokka's questions.

"You'll need that fungus to read a map by because I can't bend," she said, her words flat, stating facts.

"Great," Sokka said, shaking his head. "I've got some, but it needs water, and what we have I brought to drink."

She licked her dry lips and moaned as a bolt of pain shot up her leg, punishing her for her reckless treatment of it. "Focus on the map and getting us out. Those things won't follow us once we're out."

"How do you know that?"

Her breathing was becoming labored, and the drained feeling that had overtaken her was threatening to draw her down into sleep. "They can't stand the cold," she said. "That's why they live down here and haven't swept over the world."

"I guess so," he said. "But we can't be sure."

"I'm certain of it," she said firmly. "When it had hold of me...Never mind, peasant. I just know." There was no way she could explain it to him, or anyone. She thought even a non-savage would have to experience what she had to fully comprehend it.

"If you say so," he said. "I'll see if I can find out where we are. I might have to move around a bit, but I'll leave some of that glowing fungus by the door here so I can find my way back. You said these things probably don't find us by light anyway."

She shook her head and felt apprehension at the idea of being alone, but she was more afraid of her own thoughts than anything physical now. "Yes, go, find a way out, quickly," she said.

In the dark, inside the buildings shaped by no human hand, it would be impossible to forget what she has learned, but perhaps outside in the cold and sunlight, she could forget. The farther she got from this desolate land, the easier it would be, but something told her the knowledge would never quite leave her.

-Very well, I can bear it,- she thought, feeling her mind fray. -It's a matter of perspective, that's all. I just need something real to focus on, not the company of a savage while I hover near death in some long lost pit.-

After Sokka had gone, leaving some of the dimming green glowing moss smeared on the outside of the building, she tried her best to picture Ty Lee and Mai's faces, and even her father's. All she could think of for some reason was her mother looking sad.

To be continued...


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

His body felt like it had been worn down to mere threads, but under those frayed seams, he knew this would be their last push for freedom from the dark caverns. Another stutter, another stop, and it would be the end for them both. The glowing fungus he had packed in the rucksack had lost some of its luster, and with no water he could spare to nourish it, he had to rely some on his memory, and sense of space to keep from getting lost. It shouldn't be difficult to find where they were; all he needed to do was find one of the walls, then two of the passages out. Once he did that, he could use Hoplo's notes to find the tunnel he wanted.

But he had to be quick.

He kept reminding himself of that each time he stopped to mark his bearings in the pitch blackness. Whatever Azula had done to kill the creature that attacked her seemed to have made the others afraid to approach. It was the only way to explain their current absence. Sokka wished he knew how many of the blob monsters there were, but he guessed it didn't truly matter.

He stopped to listen only once or twice, finding that true silence had an almost deafening quality to it. The sound of the blood in his veins, being the only noise his ears could sense, was amplified by his mind, making it seem loud and overwhelming.

Finally, he came to a stone surface rougher than the dome buildings, which had to be the cavern's outer wall. He marked the spot with the glowing fungus and went left, thinking that might have been the general direction they had entered the city from. After some more time, he found an opening. It was large, rounded out and carved from the rock face like the rest of these caves. He marked one end of it and groped blindly through the blackness for what felt like fifty meters before coming to another wall. He moved along to the left, hoping he had simply veered into the tunnel at an angle and found that was the case when it bent out and headed straight. He looked back and could barely make out the green dot he'd left on the other side of the passage. Seeing that his fungus supply was dwindling, he did his best to spread it out on the wall he'd come to, thinking the broader area would be easier to see.

Using what was left of the glowing, gooey slime moss, he consulted Hoplo's journal.

"Yes," he hissed, tapping the page with his finger.

There was only one passage wide enough to be the one he had just marked, and while it led to parts even Hoplo hadn't dared tread, it was not far from the winding path he must have taken to come here. He decided to find it first and then retrace his steps.

It was a long way to where the exit passage was, but, according to Hoplo's map, it would take him where he needed to be. He marked the correct passage with the last of the slime he had allotted to use up for this, and wondered how Hoplo had found time to draw his maps and make his notes with monsters chasing him. As he went, Sokka kept his eyes open wide to detect the glow of his markings.

Darkness had blurred his sense of time, but he felt he still had a good grip on distance, especially as he was counting his steps, so when he had been going long enough to find the gap, he began to wonder why he hadn't seen the light.

-It stopped glowing,- he thought, his chest tightening. -I just spread it too thin, I should be able to see the others still.-

When his hand, which had been brushing the stone, touched empty air, his stomach twisted into a knot. He could not see the other marker and knew it wasn't because he had spread it too thin. Almost as soon as he realized he was lost, he heard it. It was like something wet and semi-solid being pushed over dry stones and gravel. It was like a whistle-snake, only rather than whistle as it moved, it gibbered.

He ran back in the direction he had come, then broke off at an angle, hoping to draw the thing away from the exit tunnel so he would not be trapped.

-They erased my trail,- he thought, his body growing cold at the realization. -They waited until I got away from Azula, then came after me.-

That meant they could see the glowing fungus light. He took a bit from his depleting store and smeared it on the walls of the domes houses as he went, then backtracked to run in another direction,hoping the thing would follow the glowing trail and not him. He could not hear anything behind him, but he kept running, hoping some course of action would come to mind or he would stumble across Azula. He'd lost any sense of where he had left her.

When more gibbering bubbled up around him, he ran faster and stopped caring about Azula. He doubted he would even find her now and only wanted to get distance between him and the blob-creatures.

"So close," he said through clenched teeth. "We were almost there! The Universe hates me! Or at least Azula."

He could only run so fast with his arms out in front of him to keep from hitting a dome. The strange buildings formed streets that were irregular at best and led him to places he knew he was not likely to find his way out of. He envisioned himself stumbling down unknown tunnels, deeper into the mountain to places he did not care to imagine. The worst part, the part that made him yearn to see even Azula again, was that there was no telling how such a mad stumble might end. In death no doubt, but would it be quick or would he find the thirst and starvation here in the deep tunnels that he had avoided above ground?

Stopping, he found the side of a domed structure and searched for the entrance. The safety they offered was only an illusion, he knew, but it was the comfort of that falsehood he sought, and once he had it, it was loose in his grasp. He could hear the gibbering in the distance or what he hoped was the distance and not some lying echo.

"Why didn't I take her with me?" he groaned, thinking they could be gone from this place by now. "Since when has splitting up ever been a good idea?"

He decided that if he ever lived to see daylight again he would take the lesson to heart and preach it to all who would listen. The gibbering was getting louder now, and it was no mistake that the sound was coming towards him. Sokka had been kneeling in order to save his legs, as they were still weak from his prior exertion, and his joints creaked audibly when he rose up and started to run.

"Sokka!"

He halted, his mind reeled in surprise and confusion.

"Sokka!"

It was Aang's voice, clear as the sound of cracking ice, and it had come from up ahead to his left. Sokka ran towards it, pulled by some sense he couldn't name but knew he could trust.

"Come on!" it came again, and Sokka was unable to suppress a joyous shout.

He kept after the noise expecting at any moment to bump into Aang, but the Avatar kept ahead of him moving out of sight. When Sokka thought he was getting lost, Aang would call again.

"Over here! This way!"

He saw the smear of glowing goo outside the door to the dome he had left Azula in and nearly tripped over her as he ran inside. She shrieked, perhaps not realizing it was him at first, then let loose with a string of curses while slapping his legs.

"Ow, hey!" he shouted, unable to keep a harsh tone, such was his elation. "Get up!We're saved!"

Azula frowned. "Saved? What are you babbling about? Be quiet."

A feeling came over Sokka that reminded him of when he used to wake up in the family igloo to discover he had let the fire go out in the night. He didn't want to believe it had happened, but his icy breath in the chilled air told him reality would make itself felt soon enough.

There had been no Aang, just the sound of the boy's voice in his mind telling him what he already knew but couldn't consciously think about, the way back to Azula.

"Did you find the exit? Have you lost your mind?" she was asking.

Had he not been preoccupied, he might have noticed the tone in her voice had not changed from before. It sounded flat, as though her thoughts were somewhere else but she was making a half-effort to appear as though she cared about what was happening.

"We have to go," Sokka said, his feet in continuous motion. "As in now. I almost didn't make it back here, and they might block the exit. They probably already have."

"Then we should stay put," she said in response, moving into a sitting position and sliding the rucksack over to him as though she already intended to comply with his plans.

"We'll die here if we do," he said. "They're getting close to figuring out you're not a threat."

"Not at the moment, maybe," she said as he slung the pack over his chest and knelt beside her. She made no effort to stifle her cries of pain as she climbed onto his back with some help from him, but she still sounded distracted. "This time you don't stop. Crawl if you have to, this is it."

"I know," he said, trying to pretend her words were more encouraging.

To be continued...


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

While she had been alone, Azula had tried to firebend but still could not. It felt like there was dry tinder inside her, and perhaps a spark to ignite it, but no oxygen to let it burn. More pressing was the shaky wall she'd built up in her mind to hold back the dark, murky water that was the knowledge she'd gained from the thing that had enveloped her. The wall was built of sandbags that were getting wet and leaking at the seams, threatening to give way and let the murk they held back wash away her sanity.

It did not help that she was in the dark, alone with nothing but the rasping sound of air being drawn through her nose and expelled through her mouth, the throb of blood in her ears, and the sensations her nerves were reporting to her brain, such as pressure, cold, and pain. This was all her mind had to work with to distract itself, to shore up that levy holding back the deluge.

Having seen herself through something else's eyes, if "seeing" and "eyes" were even the right words, had permanently altered her own view of herself and others. People were truly bizarre-looking to her now. They were soft matter shaped around a hard frame. The soft parts weren't solid, either, but contained tubes of red fluid that kept the system alive. Her own broken leg was a marvel to her now. One defect in the frame, the skeleton, had damaged the soft parts surrounding it. Those parts had acted like the rope in a pulley which had moved the bone about. Going deeper, her nerves had reported this all to her brain, which reacted rather poorly by her estimation. As intricate as the device, the body, was, she thought it terribly inefficient.

But what bothered her was just how strange she looked. Not just her, but other people. Animals, even. Tube-riddled flesh over hard bones, with protrusions, limbs, and weird sensory organ ...It was all to much to think about at once, and she shook her head to clear her mind.

"It's not strange," she whispered, simultaneously thinking how bizarre it was that she communicated through the same opening she used to eat. "It's perfectly normal. Those things are the strange ones, not us."

She had to think of something else, lest she go mad, so she focused on another ill thought she'd acquired, and that was how awfully familiar this cavern and city seemed to her. She could sense its enormity from memories that were not her own and could almost fathom the logic behind the building's shape and placement. She could see the arch of the doorway in the light glow of the fungus lantern the Water Tribe boy had left and knew that while humans knew how to build such things, other things had figured it out long before.

Azula could sense that a great deal more would be revealed to her if she simply let her mental blockade down and opened herself to the leavings from that alien mind. She might even learn how it was something could impart its thoughts into her, like a spider worm laying its eggs in the belly of a snake fish.

-Ty Lee would understand,- Azula thought. -This would fit right in with all that nonsense of hers about auras.-

But Ty Lee might not understand, because she might never know. Azula was still considering whether or not to tell anyone about this particular aspect of her ordeal, thinking, since her last encounter, that maybe some things were better left buried. Before, she had wondered if there was anything useful these creatures could teach the Fire Nation. Perhaps some engineering trick or a weapon system, but second thoughts had cropped up, ones she couldn't quite pin down to articulate even to herself. Something deep in her gut simply said this place was best left forgotten by all.

She didn't know how the Water Tribe boy felt about it and decided to have a chat with him before too long. If he didn't see things her way, she could eliminate him if need be.

Azula had been lost in scattered thoughts when Sokka collided with her. He didn't hit her leg, but he jostled it, and the sharp pain reminded her of immediate and unpleasant realities.

He began raving about how they were saved and his friends had come, and for a moment, he had her convinced this was so, but she soon realized he had finally lost his mind. She was amazed it had taken this long and was pleased when he calmed down enough to accept his reality. When he was lucid, he told her the monsters were preparing for an attack, which didn't sound like madness to her, so she didn't argue when he demanded they leave immediately. She tried to call up a flame to light their way or clear it, but Azula soon found she could not muster more than warm breath.

The Water Tribe boy seemed sure of where he was going all the same, or at least he acted as though he did. She could hear him muttering the Avatar's name and thought he was still mad but knew they were just as dead standing still as they would be on the move.

Despite the creature's memories in her mind, she could not tell where they were or how long they had been moving, only that the Water Tribe boy's breathing was becoming heavy and thick, and his limbs were once again wearing down. Her own limbs were beginning to ache as well from holding onto his wiry, powerful frame.

Her leg was a constant source of misery, but the pain did help to block the thoughts that would have crept up on her as she became more fatigued. She gripped Sokka's shoulders and let her head sink into his back, letting the awkwardness of the faux intimacy keep her focused.

-I can't keep this up,- she thought. -I can't fight those thoughts forever.-

Her head came up when she felt the tunnel vibrate. He stopped briefly then continued on until the tunnel shook again.

"That's not good," he said, his voice higher than normanl.

"So what ?Just move," she said, tightening her grip on him as the tunnel shook more and loose pebbles came clattering down.

He moved faster, spurred by more rumbling in the tunnel. Azula picked her head up to look over Sokka's pumping shoulder. She could only see a few feet in front of them from the fungus lantern and knew if the blob things had blocked the tunnel they wouldn't see it before it was too late.

-No,- she thought. -They won't pull a move like that, not on purpose. That's not how they think.-

-Goo monsters don't build dome houses,- something in her mind told her. -Not on their own, at least, not without direction.-

The tunnel shook more violently, making her focus on that and not what goo monsters did and didn't do. The rocks falling from the ceiling were getting larger, and she felt Sokka was now moving on a downward slope.

"Why are we going down!?" she shouted.

"I don't know!" he cried over the sound of the falling rocks.

She covered her own head but then realized if Sokka took a blow and went down, that was it for them both. She used both hands to hitch herself higher on his back so she covered his head. Rocks the size of fists were hitting her back, and while none hit the back of her skull, she did feel small pebbles and dirt in her hair.

They were practically falling now, and she felt bitterly cold air around her before the ground became flat. Sokka moved at a slow plod; the rocks were falling lighter now, but the rumbling behind them was still growing louder.

"This is it!" Sokka shouted, triumph and relief filling his voice "We made it! Whaaa!"

Something tripped him, and he went down. Azula rolled off him trying to keep her injured leg pointed up, but she fell on it anyway and screamed. Her cries cut short when she realized with utter repulsion that what she was lying on top of wasn't rock. It moved, slowly.

"It's one of them!" she shrieked, flailing and ignoring the agony that was her leg. "Help me!"

She saw in the gloom that Sokka couldn't help her, as he was on the black, moving carpet too. Their screams and thrashing filled the wide tunnel but slowly died down as they realized the thing under them couldn't move beyond feeble squirming.

"Uh...are you sure you need help?" Sokka asked, standing up. She blinked and saw they were no longer in the darkness but caught in a muted twilight. There was snow up ahead, sloping upward towards the cavern's ceiling. The air was as cold as she'd ever felt it, and it seemed as though the monster under them had succumbed to the frigid air. "Wow, you were right about them not liking the cold. This guy isn't much more than a gross carpet."

Her leg was close to being the only thing she could think about, the pain making her want to vomit, but as she picked her hand up and flicked bits of congealing monster off her fingers she realized what had happened. The monsters chasing them had sought to drive them into this one, only this individual had moved back too far into the cold.

-A mistake,- she thought. -It made a mistake. A stupid mistake.-

She clung to the notion like a rope thrown to a drowning sailor. Humans made mistakes. They might have nothing else in common with the strange, alien being that was the wet slime she sat in, but they had that much at least. The tidbit didn't make what she knew about them less horrible or immense, but it helped her get a grip on it.

Her attention was pulled back to the cavern, which was shaking severely now. It seemed the things had made another miscalculation of some sort, and the tunnel was collapsing. When it came down she felt the warm air being pushed out over them, mixing with the cold air as deep vibrations came up from the ground through her body.

"Come on, let's get away from it," Sokka said, shifting the rucksack onto his back and lifting her in his arms. He carried her over the living half-frozen carpet and up the snowy, icy hill to a place where she could see the sky. It was nighttime in the frozen south, and little if any light from the low hanging sun made its way into the crevasse. What little came in was bounced around by high, white walls of ice that reflected it into the cavern bellow.

Sokka set her down and despite clearly being tired, he used his boomerang to begin digging in the snow.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "You can't mean to start your balloon now?"

"No," he said. "We're in a lot of trouble, see? You're sweating?"

"Yes," she said, testily. "I've been clinging to your back this entire time in that stuffy tunnel."

"I'm sweating, too, and in cold like this, it's the same as being dunked in ice water. I need to get us in a tight space where we can share body heat until we dry off, otherwise we're both going to freeze to death."

There was a moment of quiet, then a wave of unexpected mirth bubbled of from her throat and expressed itself as an almost childish laugh. "Freeze to death, huh? It's just nice to have simple problems again," she said.

He laughed, seemingly relieved that Azula still held on to her sanity. "You can say that again," he said.

To be continued...


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

The snow hole was dark, damp, and would have been uncomfortable even if he didn't have to share it with Azula. Despite that, it was warm, and that was all that mattered. His digging had become frantic as the cold had started to seep into his bones, and it turned out to be a tougher job than he'd thought. The snow cover was loose and fluffy, while the material underneath was stubborn ice which he chipped out in slabs. In the end, he was able to make a pod-shaped opening which he helped Azula through first and followed her, covering the entrance with the canvass bundles he had carried through the caves. Feeling their weight, he thought he might be part polar dog.

Azula had stopped shivering by the time he had her inside, which was a bad sign. He was close to being in the same condition, but his heavy coat was warm, and his desire to live after all he'd gone through was strong, and neither of those things failed him. With the last of his waning strength, he was able to wrap himself around Azula and cover her and himself in his coat.

Sleep found him, and he dreamed he was the Avatar. He had encased himself in a shell of ice under the sea, and while it was dark and quiet, it was somehow warm while also being frozen. He didn't want to come out, ever. He could hear people far off calling for Appa, and he didn't want to tell them what had happened. The bubble sank deeper into the ocean, and his legs began to cramp. He could no longer hear his friends calling, but he knew they were still up there, waiting. His legs hurt fiercely and he stretched, tearing the bubble around him and letting cold water in.

When he woke up it took him a few seconds to remember who and where he was, the place was so strange. Cold, dark, save for an unfamiliar mass spooning into him. He recoiled from it, but only had room for a few millimeters of distance. After a moment, he was able to relax and his skin pressed against hers. She was warm, but not as much as she should be. He could tell she was breathing and was asleep, and he decided to let her stay that way for a while.

Something was wrong with her. He hadn't had time to think of it until now, but ever since her encounter with the blob creature where she'd killed it, something hadn't been right with her. Her voice was different somehow, like she was thinking about something else even as she spoke. He wondered if the monster had poisoned her somehow, perhaps damaged her mind. Maybe she had hurt herself fighting it. He didn't know, but it was clear something was wrong and that she couldn't firebend.

He would ask her when she was awake. Her ability to bend was key to his plan, as he didn't have access to natural gas.

-I haven't even built the stupid balloon yet,- he thought, acknowledging that he'd made many assumptions about how the design would ultimately work.

It had to work, that was that, he decided. They were now cut off from their fallback plan of waiting at the airship, and Deep Cold was as much a danger on this side of the mountain as it was the other. He tried to sleep and tried to forget it was Azula he was pressed against. When she wasn't conscious he could almost pretend she was anyone. The extreme conditions had taken quite a toll on Azula, as she seemed wispier than before, and her bones pressed into him more sharply. Those bones were lined with tight, wiry muscles which were still now, moving only as she breathed, and he could remember their fast, lethal motions from past encounters.

He moved his hips back and tried not to think about her, instead turning his mind to the balloon. He had thought as much as he could about the actual building of it, and now turned his consideration to what they would do once they were aloft. The wind would blow them in a north-easterly direction towards the sea. They need not reach the ocean, he reminded himself, they just needed to get clear of the wasteland.

His mind buzzed with energy but his body had been drained. This last exertion had been nearly as bad as the first trek across the snow to the mountains from the airship, only this time he'd been eating better, and the threat of horrific death had spurred him onward. His muscles were now making him pay for what he'd made them do, and the pain made it difficult to concentrate.

Sokka tried to ignore his pain, and Azula's body, and focus on how he planned to return north and find his family. He would have to account for Appa. With any luck, he would have Azula as a captive. That wouldn't make it better, not really, but it would help some. There was also the possibility he would be captured by the Fire Nation. They would have ships patrolling the waters to the north, looking for signs of the airship, but then again, maybe they wouldn't.

Azula moaned in the darkness, and he shook her lightly by the shoulder.

"Hey, wake up," he said.

"Ugh..."

"Yeah, ugh," he said, mimicking her moan that was equal parts pain and disgust. "We made it. Can you bend fire or what?"

He felt her body tense and her breathing change, but there was no light or flush of heat. "No," she said numbly. "I don't know what's wrong."

There was a tinge of defeat and fear in her voice that made her sound like a wholly different person. It filled Sokka with more dread than her normal ruthless tone ever had.

"You haven't eaten in a bit. Maybe you're just cold. I'll go outside and see if it's what passes for daytime down here and see if there's anything I can spare to burn."

"How will you start a fire?"

"Rubbing sticks together. Firebenders didn't invent the stuff, you know."

"Primitive, but if it works..."

"It won't work for a balloon, unless I find some kind of fuel buried around here," he said, thinking that would be some stroke of luck indeed.

"Then you wouldn't need me, would you?" she said.

"I'd need you to make this whole mess worth my time," Sokka said. "My sister is probably going to kill me as it is."

"I gather this was some sort of rogue expedition, then?" Azula said, some of her old vicious spark returning.

Sokka felt his defenses go up but thought maybe if he let her land a few jabs it might lift her spirits enough to bend.

"It was a scouting mission," Sokka said, deepening his voice. "I thought I'd take some blasting jelly along as a precaution."

She let out a weak chuckle. "You wanted payback for the Avatar," she said, yawning. "Well you got it."

"I think in the end, we'll have more than payback," Sokka said. "Just don't make any trouble. We've been doing well so far."

She laughed, and he hoped the snide, cruel tone was a sign she was getting better and not an indication she was slipping the other way. "We can be pen pals later, don't worry," she said.

"Uh, huh. Just rest," he said, getting on his fur coat and kicking the canvass away from the entrance. The hole they were in grew cold immediately, and he saw that in his haste to dig the hole he hadn't dug upward enough to trap the heat.

Outside, he plugged the hole with the canvass and stood in the center of the two-hundred year old camp, realizing his troubles were far from over.

To be continued...


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

The snow cave was dark and damp, and being so utterly sick of such places, she closed her eyes and went to sleep. Dreams of the mountain and the pulsing beneath its shadows were gone, replaced by something worse. Whatever had been left in her mind by the creature sat within it like a corpse in a closet, festering and threatening to seep beneath the crack in the door. She hoped that like a corpse, it would become dry, forgotten bones after a while if she could only keep that door shut and locked.

She kept repeating the same things to herself over and over.

-What does it matter? Who cares if those things crawled on the Earth long before humans? What's that to me? Plenty of ghastly things live on it now.-

But it wasn't the things themselves that bothered her; it was all they had done and all their existence implied. She imagined all of history being written into a single scroll. Would she, Azula, perhaps the Fire Nation's greatest leader and firebender, even take up a fraction of that scroll? The thought, in her waking moments, made her curl up tighter in an effort to be as physically small as she felt.

-Perspective, Azula, perspective,- she kept saying to herself whenever this thought came up. -Forget the scrolls, forget the snot monsters, forget it. Human history is the only history that matters. Those muck piles down there don't write histories.-

It was true, muck monsters had little use for scrolls, but other, equally horrible, things did. It seemed as though the miasma of unwanted knowledge left inside her had an intelligence of its own and would let things slip out into her consciousness, specifically with the intention of shattering one of her delusions.

Part of her wanted to let go and let everything sweep over her, but she sensed that might be impossible. It couldn't hit her at once and be done with it, no, the best it could do was sweep over her and slowly drive her mad. Perhaps it was just too much to handle all at once, or more likely, her own subconscious wouldn't allow one mad rush of destruction.

She curled into the fetal position as much as her leg would let her, both to save what little heat her body was producing, and to cry, but the tears didn't come. It wasn't something to cry about; it was something to shriek and rip out hair over, and she did not have the energy for that.

-I won't go crazy, I won't,- she repeated. -I need to bend, I need to produce fire...blue fire, orange fire, it doesn't matter.-

Azula could say the words in her mind, even mutter them aloud, as she flitted back into wakefulness. She remembered what confidence was like and could go through all the right motions to show it, but there was no feeling there. When she tried to find her center, all she found was a bottomless pit. She tried to close the edges by telling herself that nothing beyond human history mattered, that nothing beyond her history mattered, in an effort to close the pit's edges, but they would only come together so far.

-You're a speck on top of a speck, floating in a sea of giants,- a hateful, vicious voice chimed in her ears. -You don't matter. You never did, and you can never hope to, so just die.-

The canvass near her feet disappeared and Sokka came through. Perched over her legs, he whispered, "Come on, I have to move you."

"Where? Why?" The thought of her leg being moved again seemed too much to bear. It seemed dislike of pain and fear of death were the only two true motivations she had anymore.

"I put together a tent. There's enough junk buried under the snow here for a fire, so it's warm and dry there. That's what firebenders like, right? Warm and dry?"

She felt something stir inside her at the mention of the word "dry." The heat inside the ice cave had made everything damp, and while it was above freezing, it was still miserable. She felt like she'd give anything to be dry right now and focused on that desire. If pain, death, and discomfort were her remaining motivations, she would gladly take them.

"Very well," she said. "But be careful, my leg is sore as ever."

Most of her energy was spent on keeping her leg straight while Sokka did most of the work to move her. The limb hadn't hurt like this since the beginning, and she was sure it was being injured further now, but she welcomed the pain for its habit of grounding her in reality.

The tent Sokka built was canvass wrapped around long poles that leaned against one another in a cone shape. He had built a fire in the middle, and the smoke traveled through a hole cut in the top of the canvass. Inside were two wooden planks he had laid on top of the snow. The ground was packed enough so his feet didn't sink in, and once she was out of the ice shelter he had carried her in his arms to the tent and set her on one of the planks. She complained of the hardness, and he said he would get some cloth for it later.

"So," he said, sitting on his plank. "How's that firebending coming along?"

She held up her palm for a moment and twiddled her fingers. Nothing happened, and that was his answer.

"Yikes, okay," he said. "Um, any idea why you can't bend?"

"No," she said, having no intention of telling him her troubles. "Though it's possible I over exerted myself in the caverns, after I crawled off to find some water. Which we didn't need after all..."

"Life's funny like that," Sokka said.

"It's funny alright. It's all one big joke."

She hadn't intended to inflect so much bitterness into the phrase, and Sokka picked up on it. "I know this is hard," he said. "But we'll get through it. We're getting through it now. Can you honestly tell me you thought we'd live this long? Get this far? Your leg will heal, it's not like you're old or..."

"Shut up," she said. "I'm not some spoiled princess who can't handle roughing it, although that's putting what we've been doing mildly. I...I saw something."

"You saw something? Pray tell what it is you saw, then," he said, his tone calm and mocking.

"I didn't really see it. It was when that thing had me."

"That thing? When you went off to find water? All I saw was a ton of light, like the sun had come down there or something, then you in a charred room. Fill me in."

She told him in more detail about the encounter, the physical aspects at least. "I think it somehow touch my mind. Don't ask me how, but it left something in there."

She could tell by his face he had suspected something like this already. It appeared she had underestimated savage instincts.

"What do you mean, something? Like, it possessed you?" he asked, leaning back a little as though she might infect or bite him.

"No, dummy, it...it touched my mind, and I knew what it knew, and it knew what I knew. Then I killed it."

"Why was it touching your mind? It's a blob monster."

"I...think it meant to eat me," she said. "All of me. That's probably what happened to our friend, Hoplo."

"So you're upset the thing tried to eat you," Sokka said conclusively. "Well cheer up because there isn't much out here that wants to snack on you. Maybe a bull tiger-seal, but..."

"No!" she shouted, surprised at the level of frustration she felt. "No, you fool, I'm not upset something tried to eat me. I've had uglier things than that try to kill me, and it gave me all the more reason to live. You...you can't understand."

Sokka was silent for a long time and when she looked over to him there was a grin on his face and she could tell he had been looking at her the entire time while wearing it. "I get it," he said, laughing. "Oh, that is rich."

"You get it do you? Tell me, savage, what is it you think you get?"

"Savage, there's that word again," he said, still laughing. "Oh, boy, alright. I'll tell you what you're problem is, princess, get ready. It's a problem only someone like you could have.

"See, after I'd read over Hoplo's journal a few times and gone through that city, I realized something. Those things have been down there a long time. Like, a looong, time. That city didn't used to be cold and abandoned like it is now, that I can guarantee you. Don't bug be about how I know, it's just a hunch.

"The point is, whatever built it, and I doubt very much it was those blob things, was smarter than us. Humans, I mean. The way the domes are built on top of each other, the way they all interconnect, how it's all under a mountain...oh, and the fact that it's still there after all this time. I looked at Hoplo's map of it, you can tell the place was laid out with a plan."

He stood up and fed the fire with some debris from an old polar dog sled. The fire glowed brighter, and sparks flew up to die on the canvass. "You see, savages like me, we think the whole world used to be nothing but spirits. Old, powerful spirits, and when the spirit world and our world split like they are now, the spirits created our bodies so they could live in them from time to time. They made some people out of mud, others out of ice...I guess some out of air and fire, I don't know, but the point is, we never thought we owned the planet. We're not the big deal around here, no matter how awesome we may be. You get where I'm goin' with this yet?"

She glared at him, thinking her scathing remarks would be best used when he was spent.

"No? Well it's like this: People like you can't handle not being the big deal. The idea that people are specks on this earth just like the animals and plants and rocks isn't in your heads, so when you learned the hard way that you weren't all that and a bag of fire flakes, you got all depressed."

"I wish you could know what I know," Azula said softly. Louder, she added, "Your head would explode."

"Would it? Let me go on, then. Hoplo mentioned in his journal that the web of life or whatever down there was separate from the one on the surface. Separate. How can that be, do you think?"

Azula thought she could tell him quite plainly but that would require a trip to the well in her mind where more horrible facts were stored, and there was no telling what one would draw up.

"I've always had a theory, see. Well, since I was in that crazy owl library, but since then, after seeing the big star map, I got to thinking...we're on a rock hanging in empty space. The moon, the sun, the stars, those are also rocks out in the space. Couldn't something else live on the moon or maybe even somewhere else, like we do here on earth?"

She nodded, hoping her sign of agreement would shut him up, but it didn't.

"Yes! See? We're on the same page now," he said, his enthusiasm building. "Those freaky things down there weren't created by the spirits on this planet, they were made somewhere else, and somehow or another they came here to live. Heck, who's to say they didn't make us somehow? Naw, that's too nuts, but you get my point, right?"

She closed her eyes. That bottomless well was howling at her as she moved closer, tensing her muscles so she could recoil at its slightest touch. "The blobs didn't make that city," she blurted, having felt just enough of the void to feel cold again. "Tube-like monsters with heads like starfish, and the wings of wolf bats built it. They made the blobs, too, but they made them too smart, and one day they rose up and killed their creators."

She was breathing heavy now but felt lighter as she spoke. "It's no hunch, Sokka, you're absolutely correct. The stupidest of those starfish-headed things would make our brightest scholars look like children or fools. They colonized this planet like they did many others and created those blob things to serve them. The blobs...they don't think, not really. They mimic thinking like they mimic our voices and their master's voices, but they're really just mindless idiots that can absorb, store, and transfer information."

She was lighter now, as if a layer of mud had been cleared off her skin and flushed from her body. She sat up, a manic smile on her face that broadened when she saw Sokka's brow furrow and his body recoil.

"And no, you weren't nuts when you said maybe they made us. They did, in a way. They made something like us and then forgot about it. That something then grew on its own, separate, changing over time little by little until it formed the grass, the trees, the fish, the animals, and finally us! Do you get it now, you little fool? The human race and a bit of mold left to grow on bread share a common experience!"

All the weight had come off her. She felt like she might float up through the hole in the ceiling with the smoke, and suddenly she was tired. The good kind of tired, as though she'd spent herself on a day of firebending, not crawling on broken bones through a ditch of filth.

Sokka relaxed and pondered her words. She waited for his face to collapse or for his eyes to roll with insanity, and when he shrugged and said "So?" she screamed.

The cry didn't satiate her rage and so she lunged at him, causing her leg to spike with agony, but she ignored it. If she could only claw out his eyes, then he might see what she had seen and would feel humiliated as she did.

Her attacks were clumsy, and he easily shoved her off to the side and pinned her on her back with his knee over her chest. She wiggled and scratched at his leg but was unable to pierce the thick sealskin pants.

"Stop," he said, sounding tired. "Just stop. Come on, you're hurting yourself."

As soon as he said it, the pain became unbearable, and she covered her face with her hands while he got off her and dragged her back to her plank, where she rolled away from him to face the side of the tent. She felt her whole body burn with humiliation. Not over being the end result of some star-monster's science project, but of being the one to feel crushed under the burden.

"Hey, you're bending is back!" he said.

She uncovered her face to see the side of the tent was cast in a blue tinge. She rolled over in time to see the fire in the middle was fading and going back to orange, free of her indirect influence. She rubbed her face hard and willed the fire to burn hotter, but only for an instant so as not to exhaust the fuel. She licked her lips and lie on her back.

"You have a balloon to build," she said.

"I sure do," he said, sounding tired. He got up to leave.

"I'll admit," she said, as he reached the tent flap. "Perhaps my pride got the better of me. You and I might be on the same level in some eyes, but my pride will drive me to exceed that level, whereas your humility will ensure you remain there."

"Glad to have you back, Azula," he said with a shake of his head before going outside.

"Glad to be back," she said to no one, thinking of her friends and father back home. They were real, and they were people she could measure herself against, and sooner or later the world would know how things stood.

-And when that's all taken care of, perhaps I will come back here with an army of firebenders and we'll just see who the lords of the Earth really are.-

When she lay her head back on the plank and felt fatigue come over her she thought she might be just as happy if she never saw or thought of this place again.

To be continued...


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sokka soon discovered that building the balloon was going to be more difficult than he had thought. He had all the material he needed, but standing in the cold with all of it laid out in front of him, he began to take other things into account aside from simply getting airborne. The basket would need to have room for their supplies, and it would have to shield them from the wind or allow them to sit close together under a blanket to share heat.

He decided to work first on the balloon part itself, reasoning that if that didn't come together, nothing else mattered. The canvass, when unfurled, came in large sheets with holes and tassels that were to be tied together to form the load-bearing part of the seam. Flaps over the holes had smaller tassels which tied to smaller holes, so the entire thing required minimal sewing. Sokka assumed the sheets were meant to be used in a pinch as part of patch jobs, though he was not entirely sure how that was supposed to work while the balloon was flying.

Once he had a long, conical balloon shaped from the spare canvass parts, he saw that it would likely work when it began to billow in the light wind that moseyed through the crevasse. His last act on the balloon was to rig a hole at the top that he could open and close with a chord should he need to drop altitude.

He had canvass to spare when he was done, and he patted himself on his sore, aching back for bringing more than he would need. Azula remained in the tent and busied herself with sleeping and thawing out the food that Sokka had left outside the ice shelter. It was mostly mushrooms from the caverns, which they were both loathe to eat, but food from the airship was all but gone. Every now and again, Sokka would look up to the top of the crevasse in hope of seeing the black shape of Appa.

He let out a long, loud sigh and tried not to look up again after the first few times of wishing he would see the bison. He no longer cared if Appa saw him or flew on past, ; he only knew he would have nothing to say to Aang that would earn forgiveness over getting the bison killed.

"Hey!" he heard Azula call. "Hey, there!"

"Who are you talking to?" he called back.

"You! The only other person here!"

"I have a name," Sokka said, baffled at how committed she was to being unpleasant.

There was silence, then, "Sokka, would you come here, please?"

He dropped the sticks that he intended to become the basket's frame and went into the tent, glad for the warmth. His desire to take a break conflicted with his eagerness to have the balloon built.

"What is it?" he asked.

"My leg," she said, pointing to loose bandages and a removed splint. "I want to make sure the wound isn't infected."

He took a knife and cut the bandages away. They were wet from the snow and dirty from their time in the caverns, but he had wrapped them thick with that possibility in mind. She winced as he worked and when her leg was open to him he looked it over. There was a scab where the bone had gone through the skin, and while he couldn't see any white slivers, he could see dark, shiny blood. Not a fresh bleed, but the wound had been jostled too much.

He laid his hand on it and took a breath through his nose. "It isn't warm, and I don't smell rot, so I guess you're fine," he said. "I'm pretty sure the bone is out of place again, though."

She took in a deep, long breath and let it out slowly. "You better set it. I'm not afraid it will heal crooked, but if the bone is loose, it might cut me."

"Alright," he said, fetching the doctor bag, or at least the essential parts. Much of it had been left in the cave when he was loading himself with supplies.

Azula said she wanted the bone set immediately, and all she did to prepare was to bite down on a rag. Sokka took the time he needed to make sure one pull would do it, and the operation was over soon after. Azula kept the rag in her mouth but screamed mightily through it. As she lay on her back, whimpering, he applied the balm, rebound the wound, and tied the splint.

When Sokka was done, he stood and wiped his hands on the rag, then threw it down by her side. As he turned, she spoke.

"Listen," she said, her voice shaking. "Don't take this the wrong way, but...thank you."

"I'm using you for fire, so don't be too grateful," he said.

"I think we both know you could have succumbed to your baser instincts and treated me cruelly, but you haven't. I'll remember it for when you're eventually captured."

Her voice was sincere and she had a slight, friendly smile on her face. He wondered if pain had made her delirious, or simply oblivious to what she was saying.

"Don't mention it," he said, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. "I guess you could have been worse yourself." With that, he left the tent, hoping not to have more talks with Azula. "Of all the crippled firebenders I could have been stuck with, it had to be her," he muttered.

Thinking about her took his mind off Appa, so he let himself ponder her in between problems the balloon's construction presented. He was building a balloon out of two-hundred year-old debris from a doomed explorer expedition, and the problems he was running across, while not insurmountable, were frustrating. He had to force himself to value function and workability over all else. When complete, the balloon would look like something a thicket of trees had puked up, but it would carry them through the air a fair distance.

By the time he was tired and the gloom had filled the crevasse, dropping the temperature, he had the balloon half complete. He returned to the tent for a supper of wrinkled mushrooms and found Azula had tied her hair back into a ponytail and was lying with her hands on her stomach. She was also unusually talkative.

"So have you thought about what's going to happen when we reach civilization?" she asked. "You know it's going to be my people we see first, mostly likely aboard ships."

"I'm taking you back to my people as a hostage," Sokka said. "If we see a Fire Nation ship, we'll float right on over it."

"I hope we'll be too high to be shot down," she said, her voice light. "I'd also hate to have to force a landing."

"And I would hate to clobber you," Sokka quickly.

"I'm only joking, Sokka," she said. The sound of his name on her lips made his small hairs stand up. "Like you said, my leg might get bent, and the bone would cut an artery."

"Yeah, that would be a real tragedy," he said.

"It would. To come all this way to die such an ignoble death...and as for you, you'd be held responsible, and the only way you'd live long enough to be executed would be if some dour looking men wanted to ask you a few questions first in some dungeon."

"If you're trying to convince me to turn myself over to the Fire Nation the first chance I get, that's never going to happen," he said.

"You can't be expected to do that," she said. "I doubt you trust me enough to protect you."

"Exactly," he said.

"Maybe you could just let me off gently and be on your merry way," Azula said. "I could be persuaded to let you leave, unmolested by whatever force we happen across."

"I don't trust you to keep deals with a savage," Sokka said, imitating her voice. "I'm going to go back to work for a bit before the sun moves away and it gets cold."

The next day, he went back to work and was able to get the balloon to where it would carry them aloft if inflated. In its current state, it would be little more than a balloon strapped to a harness, and he had no intention of flying like that with Azula. Without the back of a warm, saddled sky bison, the wind and cold were real hampers to air travel.

Sokka tried to sleep that evening without eating, knowing Azula would need her strength if she was to be the fuel source for the balloon. She ate what passed for a hearty meal given their meager rations, and he could see color had returned to her skin, and she looked a bit thicker. He could still see bones where he didn't think they had been visible long before, but for the first time in he wasn't sure how long, he felt on top of things.

"What are you looking at?" she asked and he realized he had been staring at her.

"Uh, nothing," he said too quickly. "I just spaced out in your direction."

"Right," she said, a smile tinging her lips. "Are you sure your mind isn't changing about joining us? You've seen things under the ground that broadened your perspective. Wouldn't a united human race be more adept at holding its own in such a chaotic universe?"

"This again, huh? You know, I could see a united world working really well. Benders of all types, people from all nations working together. Problem is that's not really what you're about, and don't even think I'm dumb enough to be convinced otherwise."

She laid her head back on a pile of cloth he had gathered for her to use as a pillow. "What can I say, I'm bored. Convincing you to turn against your friends is a worthy challenge of my skills."

"What skills would those be?"

"My diplomatic skills, of course."

Sokka laughed and rolled onto his back to look at the ceiling. They kept their fire low. There was plenty left of the expedition to burn, but digging it from the snow wasn't easy, and Sokka was loathe to burn material he might come to need. "You don't have any diplomatic skills," he said.

"You just don't understand diplomacy," she said. "I bet I could convince you to join me if you agreed to keep an open mind."

His body ached, but he didn't feel tired. He supposed now that they were free of the monster-infested caverns, he could spare some energy on a stupid conversation.

-Who knows, I might learn something that can help me take them all down later,- he thought. -And she's probably thinking the same thing.-

"Alright," Sokka said. "I'll forget about the airbender genocide and my motherless childhood for a minute. That should open my mind up real good." He sighed loudly. "There, lay it on me."

"It's simply, really. The Fire Nation didn't invent war, we're merely good at it. It might surprise you to know that the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe have had their spats in the past over fishing territory. This was before the current struggle, of course. The Earth Kingdom itself is little more than scattered city-states over a vast continent, and don't tell me you think they haven't warred among themselves plenty of times. Imagine if they were all united under one banner, one government. That's what Fire Lord Sozin tried to accomplish, but he was met with stubborn, pig-headed resistance, and this is the mess we're in because of it."

"You're right, Azula, if everyone just bowed down and did what you said, the world would be a more peaceful and orderly place. You know I think there was something like that before the war started, what was it again...? Oh, yeah, the Avatar! All the nations kept to their own borders and if there was a problem the Avatar came to mediate. He was neutral."

"Was he?" Azula said. "I don't know your little arrow-headed friend very well, but do you really believe each and every Avatar has been a wise leader? Or mediator or whatever you call him? You say the Avatar is neutral, but that can't be. The ability to bend water doesn't make you a member of the Water Tribe, especially if you were born to the Air Nomads. The Avatar isn't unbiased, he simply changes who he favors once every generation, long enough for no one to call him out on it."

"You don't know anything about how the Avatar works," Sokka said, jabbing a finger in her direction. "He's been gone for a hundred years. The Fire Nation screwed the system up."

"It needed to be screwed up," she said, her eyes closing. "People put all that faith in one random person each generation. Maybe it is the same spirit, but the bodies and minds are all different each time. There's no breeding, no pedigree. You don't want to hear this, but you end up with peasants on thrones, and that's a recipe for disaster."

"I think you've made my point," Sokka said, folding his arms. "You're trying to convince me to join you, but you keep trash talking me and everyone I know. For someone so high and mighty, the only way you can get anyone to do anything for you is to force them. Do you even have any friends?"

"I have friends!" Azula said, picking her head up and narrowing her eyes. "I don't need a gaggle of hangers on, unlike some people I could name. I've got two very loyal, highly competent friends."

"Who? That weird circus girl and that scary looking chic with the knives? Yikes."

"Pfft. You and Ty Lee might get along, actually," Azula said. "Trust me, they're my good friends and they follow me of their own free will." At those last words, she turned her head away briefly, her eyes clouding with something that Sokka instantly latched onto.

"You say that like it's not me you're trying to convince," he said. "Where'd you meet them, anyway? They don't seem like the type of girls who would hang out with a princess."

She rolled onto her side, careful not to jostle her leg, and looked at him while resting her head in her elbow. "We do things a little differently in the Fire Nation," she said. "While most royalty my age in other nations were busy sipping tea, I was learning to throw lighting. Ty Lee, Mai, and I met at the Fire Nation Academy for Girls, where we learned all sorts of useful things together. We've been friends ever since."

"So they're rich kids, too," Sokka said. "The bored rich type who like a little danger. I know a girl like that."

"Do you now? Tell me about her."

"Mess with her again, and I'm sure she'll tell you all you need to know herself," he said, smiling.

"The blind girl? Yes, I'm sure she'll teach me a few things," Azula said,. "I won't pretend the Avatar hasn't attracted some powerful benders to his side. What about you? You don't bend, what use does he have for you?"

"Use?" Sokka spat. "That's your problem, see? Aang doesn't use me, I help him because I want to, and he needs it. And if you can't understand that, remember I want him to win and take down the Fire Nation."

"Alright, I'll put it in your terms...of what benefit are you to your little team? You've got powerful earth and water benders, a flying bison, or rather you had one, and I think some kind of flying monkey. I can see uses for all these people, but you..."

He coughed as she trailed off. "You might have noticed all the planning I've done for us? I'm the plans guy. I'm actually sort of the team leader."

"Oh really?" she said, her voice rising with amusement. "Well I suppose that does make sense, actually. The Avatar is the personality, but you're the brains. How did you fall into that role? Of all the great tacticians in the world, how did you fall in with the Avatar?"

"Me and my sister found him in an iceberg," Sokka said with a shrug. "He'd frozen himself inside it to survive a storm and was like that for a hundred years. We helped him out, got him oriented, and we've been helping ever since. Because we wanted to."

"You wanted him to overthrow my father, of course, why wouldn't you help him? It's quaint that of all the people he must have met, he's kept your lot at his side."

"That's friendship," Sokka said. "Those girls you hang out with, do they hang around you on their own or do you make them?"

He saw her face darken out of the corner of his eye.

"They each had obligations that drew them away from me for some time, but when I needed to capture the Avatar, I called on them for help."

"So they're your servants, not your friends," he said, grinning.

"They're my friends and my servants," Azula said. "Mai was bored and all too glad to come with me. Ty Lee was wasting her talents in some circus."

Sokka turned towards her and looked at her over the fire. She was partially obscured by smoke, but she'd let it slip she was on the defensive.

-Just stop,- the rational side of him urged. -Let her win, you don't want to break her or something.-

"Sounds like she was enjoying the circus just fine until you made her quit," Sokka said, ignoring his conscience's warning. "I don't travel with Aang because I'm bored, and I don't follow him because he tells me to. True, we have the same goals, but he'll be my friend after we win and even if we lose. Are you honestly trying to tell me those girls are your friends because you're a nice person?"

He could tell he had hit a nerve from the way her face seemed to flatten and grow black in the smoke. She went back to lie facing the angled tent ceiling and said nothing for a while.

"They see the real me," she said, almost inaudibly. "You wouldn't understand, being a peasant, but people of my stature can never show weakness. Not if we want to survive. I'm strong and determined because I have to be, and it makes having a pack of idiot friends difficult. Mai and Ty Lee are different. They understand my predicament, and they understand why I am the way I am. When you're of royal blood, you can't trust too many people."

Sokka grinned wider, yawned, and rolled to face away from her. "Well, you've used your diplomacy skills to convince me that I'm right where I need to be. I guess we'll see who can count on who in the end, won't we?"

"That we will, Sokka, that we will," she said.

To be continued...


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Azula spent much of the cold day inside the tent, doing her best to gather her strength. Her argument with Sokka had fueled her inner fire, even though she had to come to the conclusion that some people were simply too stupid to convince, and that he would learn one way or another she was right. She had also been thinking of the frozen monster near the collapsed cavern entrance, but it had made no appearance or assault on anyone's mind.

-Frozen dead, then,- she thought.

Sokka came in through the tent flap after what had to have been a grueling day, given his many curses and muttered oaths which she'd been able to hear over the low wind that whistled through the crevasse.

"It's as done as it's going to get," he said, all business. "I'm going to load the basket with our supplies, and then we can work on getting the balloon inflated. I don't have a good way of tying it down, so once you heat the air inside, away we go."

"Let's do it," she said, feeling excited. Flying in the airship had suited her, and she was eager to be airborne again, despite how her last flight had ended.

She watched him gather supplies, and as he worked she dressed in two uniforms they had taken with them. They weren't comfortable, and it hurt her leg to put them on, but they would keep the worst of the cold out. When it was time, Sokka lifted her up in his arms and carried out to the basket.

The basket looked like a hairball coughed up by a whale seal, with odds and ends jutting out all all angles from the sides. The top edge came up to Sokka's stomach, and when he set her down inside, she saw all his effort had gone into the interior, which was smooth and large enough to easily accommodate them both. He had made rope from lengths of torn canvass, and they attached the deflated balloon to the basket's four corners.

He had a long pole which he would use to pull the bottom of the balloon over them like a bag. She would heat the air beneath the small opening and as it forced its way up, the balloon it would rise and open more, thus allowing more heat and air in. He said it would probably hang over their heads for a time as she heated it, but once it was filled enough to lift them, it would likely go up quick.

"Just be careful not to set the thing on fire," he said.

"The first thing a firebender learns is control," she replied serenely.

He took hold of the pole and pulled the balloon's edge up and over them. Holding her palms out, she raised them up and called blue flames between her fingers. Her breath came in through her nose and out her mouth on one even flow as she willed the fire to grow hotter while keeping the licking flames' height to a minimum. She could feel the cuffs of her uniform getting warm as the flames in her hands turned a lighter blue, becoming almost white.

When Sokka tugged the balloon over more it was enough to start trapping the heated, rising air in a great enough volume so that the balloon unfurled on its own. It first billowed outward then up as Sokka strained to hold it steady. She could see the pole he used was some sort of flexible whale bone, and she hoped it wouldn't snap before the balloon was inflated enough to support its own weight.

For her part, she felt good. She let the fire coming from her hands grow as the balloon gave more room, and she concentrated, making them even hotter. The balloon was bulbous above their heads, and as it rose, the base stretched out, and the ropes holding it to the basket grew taught. Sokka let the pole down and set it on the rim of the basket behind him then reached for a length of rope which she saw controlled the aperture at the top. She felt the basket shift under her as the ropes began to bear weight and then could see the tent they'd lived in for the past few days begin to sink below the basket's edge.

"Easy does it now," Sokka said. "Actually, give it more heat, we want altitude fast in case there's a wind up there."

The flames at her hands were now a pale blue, nearing white. She raised her arms up higher to keep the flame from her face. She focused on her breathing and didn't see one of the canvass ropes start to unravel.

When it gave out, the basket lurched sharply to one side. She let the fire disperse as quickly as she could by sending a wreath of it away from the basket.

Meanwhile, Sokka grabbed the severed ends and tried to tie the together as they rose. "Help!" he said through gritted teeth.

She let out a growl and lunged for the rope, knowing the pain she would feel would make her unable to do any sort of tying. They were rising fast, and as she took both ends of the rope, she watched the sides of the crevasse sink under them, trying to cope with the agony in her leg. She was on her knees, and he had to slap her wrist so she would slide her hand upward to give him room to work.

"Hurry!" she shouted just as he finished tying it off.

They both fell towards the middle of the basket and watched the rope as it held. She was breathing hard and erratically, waiting for her injury to stop punishing her.

"You numbskull, that could have doomed us both!" she shouted, her hands around the wound in an attempt to make it feel better.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, looking up at the balloon. "Looks like it's holding up for the most part." He looked around them now. "And man are we flyin'."

He sounded somewhat alarmed but after a few minutes passed and nothing happened, his mood changed. "Woo hoo!" He shouted. "Oh, yeah! We did it! We did it, ha, ha! Bye bye, you stupid mountains! See ya later, frozen wasteland!"

She decided she would share in his jubilation with a wide smile. "We did do it, didn't we?" she said.

"We sure did, princess. I don't like you, and you don't like me, but we work pretty well together when we have to."

"Let's hope we never have to do so again," she said, with no hint of malice in her voice.

Sokka hesitated a moment then grinned. "Yeah," he said, holding his fist towards her.

She pondered what he meant for a moment before remembering she'd seen the gesture among some young peasants. She balled up her fist and touched it to his.

They soon learned that the air trapped in their balloon did not take long to cool, and Azula was kept busy heating the air as Sokka measured their progress.

"We're blowing east like I thought we would," he said. "Not as north as I'd like, but we're definitely going that way, too."

"How high are we?" she asked.

"Oh...pretty high, I'd say."

"That's descriptive," she said, rolling her eyes.

"I don't think we'll hit any mountains," he said. "And it's warmer than I though it would be."

"You're welcome," she said, having cooled her fire to burn its normal blue which was still hotter than what most firebenders were able to conjure. She heated the air in bursts, waiting until she sensed the balloon dip before sending up another plume. "How long do you think it will be before we're out of the cold climate?"

He was leaning over the basket and looking at the ground. Sokka held out his hand and closed one eye. He seemed to be attempting to gauge their speed. "Um...maybe a few days."

"A few days..." she said, letting the information sink in. "Shall we see how long the balloon can go without me heating it?"

"Uh, yeah, might as well figure that bit out," he said, turning back around and sitting down. He kept his head dipped, and he appeared to be thinking.

She stopped heating the air under the balloon, and after a few minutes felt it begin to descend. It wasn't dropping fast, nor was the balloon collapsing, but she didn't think she would have any time to sleep before such a thing happened.

"Oh, great," she said. "You didn't anticipate this, did you?"

"Me!? Why are you always blaming me!? We wouldn't be up here if it hadn't been for me!"

"Too true," she said, and sent up a powerful jet of fire before he could retort. "We'll just have to land when I get tired."

"Maybe," he said. "If there's no other way, but you know it's going to be a rough landing, right?"

"Why? We'll just let the air under it cool and it will drop down."

"Yeah, but how fast is the question. If the basket breaks, it will take time to fix it and we'd risk getting hurt. If I get injured or you get hurt more and can't bend, we're pretty much toast. Again."

"I'll go as long as I can," she said, feeling angry. She was already a bit tired. "But it's probably better if we land before I pass out, don't you think?"

"I think talking takes up energy," Sokka said, and was silent for a while. He stroked his chin and looked up at the balloon. "Maybe we'll get a strong wind if go higher."

She frowned. "It's colder the higher we go. And harder to breathe, don't forget."

"Fire needs oxygen to exist, so you can only go so high anyway. Just make with the firebending already," he said, moving his arms around to parody a firebending form.

She laid on her back with her hands pointed up, shooting jets of fire into the balloon every so often when she felt it dip. Watching the billowing canvass, she could tell when the air was cooling and needed heat and was able to time her plumes so that she sent up only what was needed. Azula grew bored in short order and began amusing herself by twisting the flames into shapes. She caught Sokka watching this display and decided to make them more elaborate. She was trying to make a tree when the bottom edge of the balloon caught fire.

Sokka screamed at a higher pitch than was manly and leaped to his feet. Azula let him bat at the fire for a moment as it spread before she reached towards it and drew her hand into a fist, willing the flames to dampen and shrink. A black rimmed gap was left in the balloon, as though some large mouth had taken a bite.

"Quit screwing around!" Sokka shouted. "If that hole had been any higher up..."

"Calm down," she said, feeling stupid and hoping it didn't show. "We survived your mistake with the rope, and we survived my little error. Did you think we'd get through this without a few mishaps?"

He said nothing and sat back down, meanwhile Azula focused on not letting her ears and cheeks turn red with embarrassment.

"Don't worry about it," he finally said. "Just...let's not mess up now. Either of us."

"I'm over it," she said quickly.

She tried to ignore that he was looking at her intently but couldn't when he cracked satisfied smile. "Something funny?"

"No," he said. "I guess you being a perfectionist makes sense. I thought you might be the type who makes excuses, but nope. You blame everyone around you, but you get mad when you mess up."

"Is now really the time for this?" she asked. "I suppose your way of handling failure is much better."

"I dunno," he said. "I screw up like everyone else I guess. I try not to let it get to me."

"Which means you never learn from your mistakes," she said, putting a smug droop in her eyes.

"What? I learn all the time from my mistakes!" Sokka said, holding up a finger to emphasis his point.

"So tell me then," she said, letting her aching arms fall to her sides to rest. "What have you learned from this whole debacle? Aside from the fact that unknowable horrors likely created life on this planet."

"Aside from that? Not to hit back out of anger, I guess."

"Ah yes, this was payback for the Avatar, wasn't it? Did you know I'd be aboard the airship?"

"No, you were a surprise. I just wanted to blow up an airship. How many of those things is the Fire Nation going to build?"

She made a show of tossing her head from side to side as though weighing two options. "Hm, do I lie to you and say only a few, or do I lie to you and say hundreds? Maybe I'll say that was the only one, and by downing it, you scrapped the entire program."

"Hey, whatever," Sokka said with a shrug. "They blow up really easy, so it's no biggie either way."

"You'll need a sky bison or an airbender to get close enough," she said, feeling a vicious stab of satisfaction. "And you're fresh out of both, last I checked."

He scowled. "Alright, you're making it awkward again," he said. "Let's just chill and hope we get really far to the north. I'll chill, you...cook or flame or whatever you call it."

"Fix me a mushroom kabob, I'm hungry," she said as though addressing a servant.

He surprisingly obliged her by spearing a few of the cave mushrooms on a stick and used her next fire plume to cook them. She ate with one hand and flamed with the other, vowing that once she escaped this ordeal, she would never eat another mushroom as long as she lived.

To be continued...


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

"So then I said to Toph, 'Sure, some bugs are tasty, but you have to admit it's a lot of work to find the right ingredient to cook 'em with.' She kept trying to tell me bugs were only good fresh, then Katara chimed in with 'bugs are disgusting no matter how they're cooked,' and so I had to tell her they're an excellent source of meat in many parts of the world, and...hey! Wake up!"

Sokka tapped Azula hard in the ribs with his foot as the balloon started to descend. He was standing up, leaning against the basket wall. When she didn't stir, he poked her harder. Her eyelids unfurled, and she stared straight up into the balloon with weary hatred. Her chest expanded, her lips pursed, and when her mouth opened a jet of light blue fire shot out and upward for a few seconds.

He almost felt bad for her and would if he didn't also have to remain awake in order to keep her from falling asleep. It had been two days since they had taken to the sky, and if Sokka remembered correctly, he had been flying over the Southern Sea on Appa's back for only a little less time than that. The bison was faster and more direct, and he guessed that if the wind was on their side, it would be another day and a half before the balloon was floating within sight of the sea to the north.

She sent up another plume of fire, this time with her hands, and held it for a long time before letting them fall to the basket's floor. Her eyes closed, and her face relaxed.

"Hey, don't fall asleep," he said.

"A few minutes," she said as she yawned. "Won't hurt."

He tilted his head up to watch the balloon. They had to remain high in order to keep with the fast east/north wind. Any lower, and they would be traveling longer at an even slower speed. The only problem was that, at the height needed for optimal wind speed, the air was cold, and the balloon cooled faster, demanding near-constant attention.

Sokka looked over the balloon's edge and saw the ground was a mottled sheet of rocks and ice. It looked like the top of a cream-pie cake, and while his mouth watered at the thought, it also considered the danger of a damaged basket or worse, torn balloon canvass.

There were dark rings under Azula's eyes, and she seemed to have lost the ability to moan in pain. As for him, his body also seemed to have forgotten how to ache as a general mercy, but he thought once he got some rest, the deficit would likely be paid. He saw the balloon was descending again, and he let it dip what had to be a few thousand feet before waking Azula with a hard kick. "

Go easy on it," he said. "We'll hang out at this altitude for a bit, and you try to sleep as much as you can in between heats, got it?"

She didn't answer and only sent up one plume of fire from a crooked armed before letting it flop back onto her stomach.

"Little more," he urged, and she complied with a groan. "That should do it for a bit."

"We're going to have to land," she said, throwing the words out of her mouth.

"Shh," he said. "Nap time, remember?"

"Ugh..."

He continued his vigil and his story about the Great Bug Debate, which was now more to keep himself awake than Azula, who seemed to have no trouble ignoring him. Sokka kept looking up at the balloon and saw that it was taking less time to deflate as the air cooled slower. He could see the ground in more detail, although there wasn't much to see beyond sharp hillocks of snow and ice. The cold air that had whipped at the back of his head and kept him alert seemed warm now by comparison, although it was still freezing. He noted with approval that the sun seemed to be back to its normal setting at night pattern, indicating how far north they had already come. He kept looking to the horizon, hoping to see a long line of gray water, but he knew it would be some time before that was to be expected. He now wished he had brought something to hold wood in while it burned, that way Azula could rest for a time, but there was nothing he could do now.

Sokka kept telling himself that his biggest problems now would be mere inconveniences. If he had to land the balloon, they could raise it again, and if it tore beyond repair, he could make another sled and drag Azula north to the sea. He reasoned he would only be half dead by the time they got there. As for now, sleep deprivation seemed preferable to near death from cold, exhaustion, and blob monsters.

He patted Hoplo's journal and wondered what he would do with it. It was clear the blobs had rested under the mountain for eons without bothering anyone who didn't come asking for it, so he felt no danger by leaving them there for the time being. Azula seemed disinclined to speak of them, which either meant she wanted to forget about it all, or more likely come back for revenge. Sokka wondered what secrets that ancient city might hold. Was there possibly a library there, like the one Wan Shi Tong had kicked them out of? He didn't like the idea of the Fire Nation getting hold of something such as that, but reminded himself that one way or another the war would end this year.

"Hey," he said when the balloon needed inflating.

He had to kneel by Azula and shake her awake. She had been asleep long enough for her eyes to flutter behind their lids, and watching her wake was like seeing someone pull themselves up out of a muck pit.

"I'm forcing a landing," she said groggily, conjuring a jet of fire. "Royal decree." Her head rolled to the side when she was done, and he hoped she would forget about her decision the next time she woke.

-I guess if we went down slow enough,- he thought, looking over the edge. "Alright, alright, wake up. Up!" he said, shaking her.

She came to life again, dim and angry. "I'll burn you," she said. "You'll go up like a candle."

Sokka did not think she was capable of burning anything at this point. "We're landing, but I need you to help control our speed. I'm going to let some air out near the top and see how it goes," he said.

He pulled on the cord and was happy to see it worked. The opening at the balloon's top slid away, and the basket began to drop faster than he had expected. "Alright, give it a little heat," he said, tugging on the string that closed the opening. The balloon shifted, and the cord didn't move. The hole would not close.

"Close it," Azula said, sounding more alert as she produced fire. "Oh look, another one of your mistakes."

She sent up more fire to keep the balloon aloft, but Sokka had to swat at her arms to make her stop as the balloon started to smolder. They were dropping fast now and from a height well above the tree-tops, had there been any trees bellow. All Sokka could think about was how sharp the small ravines of ice and bits of protruding rock looked from thousands of feet above.

He was screaming, and Azula was cradling her leg in anticipation when they hit. Sokka was sent to the floor of the basket and the air was forced from his lungs. He heard Azula make a sound like her rear end had been sent up into her chest, and then he saw nothing as the balloon came down over them.

His head spun with dizziness while he fought to pull air into his abused lungs. His thoughts were of the whipping wind and the balloon billowing over the sharp ice and rocks. He ignored Azula's pained moans and cries as he climbed out of the basket and untangled himself from the canvass, being careful not to rip it.

Sokka ran to the top of the balloon and gathered it up, forcing what air was left out as he did a sloppy folding job. He learned that he'd given the ground too much credit and the canvass not enough. There were no tears he could see, and when folded, the balloon draped over the basket, creating a makeshift roof. He climbed back into the basket and sat down. It had been getting dark, and he closed his eyes.

"Is it damaged?" Azula asked, her voice shaking in pain.

"No," he said. "We're good to sleep."

She moaned and went still. He heard her trying to sleep, but it seemed as though the shock of the landing had put her in lasting agony.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"No," she said. "Leave me alone."

He nearly did as she asked but something stirred him to move next to her. "Are you hurt?"

"I don't know," she said, forcing her voice to not crack. "Nothing feels broken...nothing new."

"Lie flat," he said, arranging their cloth supplied to form a pillow for her. She shifted her position to the one he suggested, groaning as she did so. When she was on her back with her arms to her sides, he looked at her leg and saw it was no worse than before. "Sorry, that's all I can do."

"It's not serious, it just hurt. Sleep now."

"We'll freeze," he said.

"Ugh. Do what you must."

He undid his big coat and laid next to her, using the coat as a blanket. He could feel her warmth through her clothing and tried his best to press against her without it feeling strange. It did anyway, and he did his best to ignore it and fall asleep.

To be continued...


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

Azula woke to the basket being jostled. She closed her eyes again and waited for Sokka to stop stirring, then felt his leg next to her arm. The basket was jostled harder, and she heard a low rumbling. She began to move and had opened her mouth to order the Water Tribe Boy to investigate, but his hand fell on her head. She understood it as a bid for silence, so she kept still while he moved like a glacier to peer out of the basket. When he lifted a flap of canvass, the daylight from outside shined inward, making her blink. He pulled back slightly faster and whispered directly into her ear.

"Polar bear dogs. Two of them."

She had only heard stories of the polar bear dogs. "What do they want? We don't have any meat," she retorted in a whisper.

"We are the meat," Sokka said, still talking low. "Food is scarce out here, and big animals like that don't play around."

"We need to drive them off," she said. "Unless you think we can get this balloon up with them around."

"We can't," Sokka said. He was quiet for a while but seemed to think faster as the nudging at the basket became more insistent. "Alright," he said finally. "I'm going to throw over the canvass and hoist you up. It'll hurt, but you need to throw fireballs. Got it?"

She sighed and prepared to put her weight onto her good leg. Sokka gave a brief count down and shouted "Now!" as he pulled the canvass away and pulled her up by hooking under her arms. The angle he had her up at was awkward, and she had to release a fan of flames above the dog's heads as they circled close to the basket. The larger of the two bounded away, while the the other backed up, growling.

Sokka shifted his grip, taking her around the hips and lifting her higher. She could feel the blood rushing to her leg, putting pressure and pain on it, but focused on singing the buttock of the braver, or hungrier, of the two polar bear dogs. It yelped and ran off to join its companion a respectable distance away. They nearly blended in with the snow, but their black eyes and noses kept turned toward the balloon.

"Told you they don't mess around," Sokka said. "Keep ready, they might get brave and come back. One's fat, the other is skinny, so that could mean they just hooked up and won't cooperate too well."

"Ow...what if they do?" she asked, her leg a searing distraction.

"They might come at us from opposite directions," he said. "They only need to hit us once, and we're probably done for. Come on, let's get the balloon up before they put that much together."

She waited while he found the long pole he had used to prop up a corner of the balloon and wedged it beneath like he had done before so there was an opening above their heads. She gave it a hot flame and like before, the balloon went billowing up and out. She concentrated on her breathing and the balloon filled out and rose up, taking the basket with it.

"Oh, crap, lookout!" Sokka shouted.

The pole went out of his grasp, and the balloon basket reeled to one side and tipped. She went sliding to side wall next to Sokka, who was swinging his boomerang at the skinny polar bear dog that had bounded after them as they rose. She saw its jaws had clenched into his arm and were pulling him over the balloon's edge. Without weighing her options, she engulfed her hand in flame and hoped up, slapping the dog's face with her burning hand. It yelped and let go of Sokka, who fell back into the basket, clutching his arm. Azula, ignoring the pain in her leg, put more heat into balloon, causing it to rise faster.

Sokka was rolling on the floor of the balloon, jostling it, until Azula slapped him. "Stop moving! How bad is it?"

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. "It mostly got my coat...agh..." He took off the coat, and she could see it was stained with blood. He held the arm up, and she saw the dog bear's teeth had broken the skin over his left tricep. "Man that smarts."

She searched for the doctor bag and slid it over to him as he took off his shirt. She sent up a hot blast of flame and held it for a while, making the basket lurch upward as their altitude increased. He was fumbling with rags and bandages when she slid next to him.

"Stop, let me do it," she said.

Two big puncture marks were responsible for most of his bleeding, and, summoning tiny flames to the tips of her fingers, she stopped it, making him yelp. Cleaning the wound as best she could with no water, what they had being reserved for drinking, she put the disinfecting balm over all the wounds and then proceeded to wrap it up.

"There," she said, tying a bandage off. "A flesh wound at best."

"Thanks," he said. "If it were winter, I'd say those dogs are a sure sign we're near the sea."

"Why's that?"

"They hunt tiger seals as they come up through the ice. There's more tiger seals farther south along the ice sheet in the summer when it's not so thick, but in the winter, the place gets pretty barren, and the polar bear dogs slink around the coast more. We could still be pretty close to the sea, though."

"We can't be far off," Azula said. "We've been traveling constantly at a good speed."

"We started pretty far south," Sokka said. "And this balloon is no Appa, or even an airship. I thought we were a day and a half away at most, but that was up there where the wind was faster."

"Well...I'm rested now, so give me something to eat, and I'll have us in the high-winds soon enough."

He fixed her another mushroom kabob, which he roasted on the fire she used to make the ascent. She ate it quickly, hating the taste and hating more the memory of the place where they grew.

"I notice you lost the pole we use to inflate the balloon," she said.

"Yeah, and I never fixed that problem with the hole at the top," he said. "Which means our next landing is going to be hard, and it's probably going to be our last."

"We won't stop until we reach the sea," she said, her gold eyes alight with determination. "You can build a boat when we get there, that should be safer."

"I can do boats," Sokka said. "I'm pretty much the boat master."

"Great, but what we need now is a balloon master who can figure out how to make our landings softer."

"I think I'm on board with that," Sokka said, and rested his chin in his hand to think.

-000-

Another day passed at high altitude, and, to conserve their energy, they spoke and did little. Azula kept up with the flames, and every so often, Sokka looked over the edge of the basket to track their progress. He shouted when he began to see more rocks and stunted shrubs. He shouted all the louder when he saw the thin sliver of gray on the horizon that marked the edge of the southern sea. At least he thought it was the southern sea. He had no idea how far east they had gone and it could be the South Eastern Ocean he was looking at. Either way, it was a long way north to where he'd left from on Appa's back, and that was assuming the resistance fighters were still there.

His elation at seeing the water was dampened by the thought of the journey he still had ahead of him. The thought of ditching Azula at some village occurred to him, and as his mind pondered the ramifications, he noticed something near what had to be the shoreline. As he squinted, Azula came up beside him, wanting to see water that wasn't frozen, perhaps.

It was too late to stop her from realizing what the orange speck was.

"Saved!" she cried. "Ha, ha, ha! Those are Fire Nation banners, Sokka. Looks like I win."

He had piled their supplies into two mats to be used as crash pads when they landed. From one, he took a spyglass. Looking through it, he saw it was indeed a Fire Nation camp near the shoreline, and it would not be long before he and Azula were spotted. His heart began to sink, but then beat faster when he saw a ridge of white fur mixed in with the fires and banner poles. He bit his tongue rather than shout his joy over seeing Appa.

As the balloon drew closer, and as Azula chuckled, he saw the bison was tied to a platform and being dragged up a hill by Fire Nation soldiers. He could see several boats behind them on the water.

-Alright, so they caught Appa...and rather than take him back to the Fire Nation, they brought him here,- he thought.

The bison looked dirty and disheveled and clearly had been abused. He set his anger aside and kept looking, noting the balloon was slowly beginning to descend from Azula letting the trapped air cool. He kept his eye on Appa and thought he was probably in good enough condition to fly, as they had taken the trouble of tying him down.

He tried his best to filter out his own knowledge when guessing how the Fire Nation would act. It was clear they thought Appa had something to do with the missing airship, and he supposed they wouldn't be able to make too many assumptions about his balloon when they saw it.

-But Azula will make it pretty clear to them what's going on the first chance she gets,- he thought. -Gonna have to think on my feet here, get Appa, get away.-

As he had no idea how he was going to handle the Fire Nation on the ground, he turned to inspect its princess, who leaned over the edge of the basket alongside him. Her hair had been tied back in a tail and looped in on itself so resembled the tail of a tropical bird, only it was raven black rather than brightly colored. Lack of sleep and so much time spent underground had left her skin sallow and dark beneath the eyes, but now her expression had brought a brightness to her face that Sokka did not find altogether unpleasant. She looked like any young girl who had sighted home after a long, hard walk in the darkness.

And then he caught the blaze in her amber eyes and remembered who and what she was, a coiled eel viper always in a position to spring.

"So," he said, loosening his boomerang in its sheath. "How is this going to end?"

First her eyes turned towards him, then her head. She seemed mildly surprised to find she still had a battle to fight. "What do you mean? Those are my people down there with your sky bison in chains. I'll let the balloon go down, and unless you learn to firebend within the next few minutes, we'll be on the ground, and I'll be saved."

"So I'll just take Appa and leave then?" he asked.

The satisfaction held by her facial features diminished somewhat, but its loss did not alarm or surprise her, and her eyes blazed all the brighter. "I'll see that you're treated as though you were a captured noble, not a low-life peasant. But you'll have to act appropriately and understand that there's a limit even to my authority."

Her last words sounded like an admission, and Sokka could not help but smile ruefully. "So all that mess we went through didn't change you a bit?" he asked.

"Nonsense," she said with a wave of her hand. "I plumbed the very depths of my potential as a firebender and personal resilience as a person. Once my leg heals, I'll be stronger than ever."

Her face and demeanor, despite being under duress from fatigue and injury, presented Sokka with a flawless stone surface. Flawless in appearance, at least. He sensed it was a veneer. A smooth, dark, brittle surface that concealed a vast hollow space underneath.

Sokka shrugged. "Well, I don't know what I learned exactly, but one thing I do know is that I'm not going down without a fight."

She tensed, ready but reluctant to fight him.

-She knows she could burn me pretty good, but she also knows one good bump on that leg of hers and she'll wish she'd never been born.- He felt mean and ugly for having such a thought, but something told him Azula might not have as much a say in his fate as she claimed, especially once the soldiers found out what happened to their comrades on the airship and who was responsible.

"I suppose I knew it would come to this," Azula said, backing away from him.

The balloon was descending, and from the corner of his eye, Sokka could see more activity among the Fire Nation expedition. He wondered what they were up to but dared not take his eyes off Azula. "You might think I'm just a crippled princess, but you'll soon learn better."

"Why don't you just relax?" he said, his hand resting on the hilt of his boomerang. Her palms had not ignited yet, but he knew they could in an instant. "Are you really that surprised that I'm not going to be taken prisoner?"

"Not really," she said, not relaxing. "You're the stubborn type."

"Funny, back in that cave, you sounded like you were ready to make me a prince," he said, smiling as he recalled her sad attempt to convert him when they were debating the merits of braving the caverns.

"Don't flatter yourself. You're a Water Tribe peasant, and that's all you'll ever be."

Her insult bounced off his furs like the cutting wind, and he shrugged. A worm of thought had begun to writhe in his brain, and while he wasn't sure about where it was headed, he knew the general direction and let it play itself out through his instincts.

"You'd have to admit, though, if I were just a common Water Tribe peasant, the Fire Nation would be in a lot of trouble," he said, pretending to brush some lint from his fur.

The balloon's descent continued, but it slowed as it was caught in an updraft and pushed gently at an angle away from the Fire Nation troops and towards a wide expanse of snow.

Azula laughed. "I think the cold has finally seeped into your brain," she said, shifting her weight uncomfortably. Sokka thought the least he would accomplish was wearing her out through talking.

"It hasn't," he said flatly. "The cold didn't get either of us. We didn't even get frostbite. We didn't starve, we didn't have to eat people, we didn't get eaten by blob monsters or polar bear dogs, and here we are, flying through the air in a balloon I built."

"That I've powered," Azula said, crossing her arms.

Sokka nodded and smiled. "Yep. You also kept us warm when I couldn't, and you helped fight off those blobs and polar bear dogs, but where would you be without me?"

"Comfortable and bored in an airship," she said, turning her head away.

"True, but this is war, remember," he said, rolling with her jab. "Oh, yeah, I flew to the south pole, intercepted your airship, and took it down. Oh, wait, you helped with that too, didn't you?" He was smiling now, hoping she saw the joke.

The corners of her mouth turned up, telling him she saw the irony of it all. "Is there a point to this speech?" she asked, looking at him sharply now.

"I just want you to admit that you'd be dead without me and that I've done a pretty good job getting your butt this far," he said.

"Is that all? You don't want to be set free?"

"You let me worry about being free," he said. "You've made it clear you'd rather have me under lock and key than out there, planning to take you down."

He thought he might have overstepped and revealed what he was doing. He wasn't sure what his plan was himself, but from the affronted angle Azula's chin and shoulders had moved, he could see she had taken the bait. "I see I'm not the only one who's gained a deeper appreciation for themselves," she said. "Though in your case, I might call it arrogance."

Sokka made a show of looking around the balloon. "Is there someone here you're trying to impress? It's just the two of us, princess, and we both know I'm not arrogant. Now, before we hit the ground, suck it up and admit that I've been pretty smooth."

-And smooth you'll be if you pull this off, old buddy,- he thought.

Her lips parted to speak more words of scorn, but they paused as her eyes narrowed, and she started to ponder him in earnest. To Sokka, it looked as though she were seeing him for the first time, and when her eyelids rose no more than a centimeter, he knew he had her, though what she would do now, he had no idea.

"Alright," she said slowly. "Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, I wish to formally thank you as a Princess of the Fire Nation for all you've done to help me. And while I won't pardon your attack on my airship, I will acknowledge it as a brave act of war, albeit from an enemy." Her tone held no mock formality; it was sincere, and she accompanied it with a small bow as far as her wounds would let her.

"Well, you're welcome, Princess Azula," he said, vowing to speak no more, lest he risk destroying what he thought he had built. If he'd built anything at all.

-If I'm reading her right, she'll appreciate me being a little smug. Helps that everything I said about myself was true...Somehow, I doubt I'll be invited to dinner, but if I can keep out of shackles long enough to get close to Appa.. Guess I'll have to play it by ear.-

The balloon was going down fast now, and Azula was looking at him with a kind of wistful expression. He had no illusions about how far she had been won over. He had been able to tell she already respected him in her strange way, and he dared not contemplate what twisted version of human emotions she was now forming in his direction. Thankfully, he wouldn't have to think about it much longer as the balloon was now definitely on a crash course.

"I think it's time we assumed crash positions," said Sokka, breaking the silence.

The supplies he had piled to cushion their fall did not look anywhere near so soft as they had before, now that the balloon was on its way down.

Azula nodded and went to the floor of the basket on her own, unable to stifle a pained cry as her leg suffered a nudge. Sokka remained standing as long as he could, watching the snowy ground grow closer and closer. It was possible they would hit and be dragged, thus taking some force from the landing. In that case, he would have a decision to make; either switch to his plan B or keep following plan A for a while longer.

He jumped to his crash pad and felt his stomach tighten. The impact was as hard as it had been the first time, only now it was accompanied by them being upended and dragged inside the basket. Snow came in on them, and their gear was sent flying all about while the world became a jumble of snow, cloth, and hard objects. He heard Azula cry out, but his head was promptly buried in icy snow.

When he pulled himself free of the snow and loose items he couldn't see, which told him he was trapped under the basket, he could distinctly hear Azula whimpering and reached out for her, still not sure if he intended to comfort or inflict violence.

She let out a snarl of pain and rage that made him recoil. For a moment, both were quiet, then the gloomy cavern filled with a dull blue light. He could see her face behind the fire, long and drawn, her eyes black. She was breathing heavily and clearly in agony.

"Very well, Sokka," she said, her voice pained. "Do as I say now, there'll be no argument..."

"I told you, I..."

"Silence! You listen. I've decided to spare you this once, so there'll be no question later on what you're owed."

"Thanks," Sokka said, feeling he was being rather gracious. "Let's get out from under this thing. I don't want to be trapped when your people get here."

"Stop," she said. "It's not that simple. You're going to take me hostage."

Sokka's voice caught in his throat as she suggested what his plan B had been.

She continued. "I don't have time to explain every angle of my thinking to you, so we'll leave it at this: I have to save face. When my men get here, you'll have your little dagger at my throat. It needs to be convincing, so don't act weak. Understood?"

He nodded, sensing now was not a time to argue, but he should still expect treachery.

-She knows that was my plan all along,- he thought. -She figures if she's in on it, she'll be able to turn it around on me. Okay, princess, you're about to experience some award-worthy acting.-

The balloon started to move on its own, and Sokka jumped into action, realizing he had somehow not heard the soldiers come upon them. He got behind Azula, who shrieked, and grabbed her by the coat. As the basket was heaved over, he stood, drawing his dagger and holding it in front of Azula's face where all could see it.

"Hold it!" Sokka shouted, touching the blade to Azula's throat.

The soldiers, about half a dozen in the first group, were only a few feet from him, while a larger group of slower men were a hundred feet off. They stopped, and Sokka trudged back through the snow, dragging Azula and making her moan in pain.

"You disgusting savage, I'll kill you for this, mark my words," Azula said between clenched teeth.

"Stop moving!" he shouted. "All of you, back off!"

The men looked winded from their run and bewildered, but they knew enough of their princess to recognize her in her current state and the peril she was seemingly in.

"Seize him!" Azula shouted. "He doesn't have the guts! He's bluffing!"

The soldiers hesitated but slowly began to move forward. Sokka bit his lip and lifted Azula's head by her chin, then pressed the knife blade deep into the soft flesh between chin and neck. She growled, but it was enough to make the soldiers stop their advance.

"Easy, kid, just let her go!" shouted the lead soldier.

He was three men back and raised his helmet's face mask. He wore a day's worth of stubble and looked tired to Sokka, who was sizing up each man as carefully as he could while taking note of Azula's struggles. She was a warrior and would know where and how to strike even from her current position, yet she wiggled and pulled like a true damsel in distress.

"Oh, you're dead," Azula said venomously. "You won't live another hour, I promise."

"Just shut up," Sokka said to her, still not letting himself give up the fear of treachery. "Listen up!" he shouted to the soldiers. "You're going to untie that sky bison so I can leave. When I'm on his back, you get your princess, and I go free. Got it?"

The men were silent, and all but the leader exchanged glances. "We'll untie it, but we can't control it," he said wearily. "We had a job capturing it, I'll say that."

"Is he injured? Can he still fly?" Sokka asked.

"That's why he's tied down," said the commander. "Is he yours? Are you the Avatar?"

"No, I'm not the Avat...quit stalling!" Sokka jerked the knife, and Azula squeaked.

"Don't do it!" she shouted to her men. "He's still bluffing. He doesn't have the guts to kill me, and if he did, then where would he be? You have the upper hand, so don't let him escape!"

Sokka tapped her injured leg with his foot, and she screamed. He pulled her in tighter and fixed the commander with the coldest stare he could.

"You know she's crazy," he said. "If you're afraid of her, think about what the Fire Lord will do to you if his daughter comes back in any worse shape than she already is."

The commander's eyes flickered between the two of them, and for a wild moment Sokka wondered if he might order them both killed. They were far from the Fire Nation, after all. The commander finally nodded his head and waved at the men behind him.

"Fine, we'll do it your way," he said. "Just leave her be."

"He's playing you," Azula said, her voice filled with pain. "I'll have you all executed for insubordination! Your careers will be over!"

Sokka only had eyes for the commander's face. He didn't know this man but knew his type. He wasn't a noble, but the lines on his face spoke of someone used to thinking who had risen in the ranks of the military as a commoner. He likely had a healthy fear and respect for the nobility, hence his presence in this place. And if he had any hand in capturing Appa, he was certainly no buffoon. Despite this, his gaze of uncertainty was bending towards malice, and it wasn't aimed at Sokka.

Azula had to have sensed this, he thought, but in the event she hadn't, she was dangerously close to pushing this man over the edge and making him do something that would bode ill for Sokka's survival.

Sokka took a deep breath and steeled himself, thinking it was quite possible it would be Azula whom he would alienate. He took her by the chin and pulled her head to the side. He pressed the tip of the dagger over her neck, above the hard line of muscle far from any soft flesh or artery, and drew a thin red line. He kept his face rigid, thinking about black snow. Still, he felt like the basest of scumbags.

Azula initially made no move, perhaps too shocked at what was happening, but a second after his blade left her skin, she screamed and sunk in his grip. "D-do what he says!" she stammered. "Release the animal! Do what he says! NOW!"

Her last word was a piercing shriek, and it set the soldiers in motion.

"Back. Off," Sokka said to the commander, who had stayed, and the man began taking long steps backward. The wind had come up over the snow, making the balloon billow and everything turn white for a moment. "Sorry," Sokka whispered into Azula's ear.

She responded with heavy breathing, and he could tell from how she moved that her leg was her main concern. He looked down at the wound he'd inflicted and saw it was little more than a scratch, something a thorn might have outdone.

The wind died down, and he could see the commander alone in the snow. The men were still running back to the camp, along with those who had brought up the rear, and Sokka nearly groaned, knowing how long he would be standing here in the snow like this, knowing these could well be the most important moments of his life.

"Let me down," Azula said, weakly, and he guided her as she slumped into a sitting position.

He got a look at her leg. Azula's luck had finally run out, and her shin was bent near the middle at a slight angle. Sokka thought perhaps she had reached a pain overload, which was why she wasn't screaming.

"Sorry about your neck," he said again.

"Don't apologize...weak," she muttered.

His eyes were now fixed towards the Fire Nation camp where he could see the men arriving. It was another minute before he saw Appa rising into the sky, and for a horrible moment, he thought the bison was leaving when he turned north. This was part of a circle, however, and Appa seemed to be trying to decide between escape and revenge.

"Appa!" Sokka shouted as loud as he could. "Appa, over here! Appa! Yip yip!"

He thought it was fortunate the sky bison had sharp ears and eyes, as the giant mass of fur turned towards him and came in low. The commander, sensing danger, conjured fire in each fist but held it, coming closer to Sokka and Azula.

Sokka twirled his dagger, and the commander stopped just as Appa came to the ground behind him, landing as though he were light as a fire hawk and not a multi-ton mammal. Appa seemed to have comprehended some of what was happening and merely bellowed a greeting rather than slurped Sokka with his tongue. Sokka hoisted Azula up, and she cried out, making the commander jump.

"Where are you going with her!?" he shouted.

"Someplace warmer but less firebendy," said Sokka. "Toss your little fireball if you want, but have fun explaining to the Fire Lord how his daughter got scars to match her brother."

Sokka went quickly up Appa's tail, and with practiced agility he had her in Appa's saddle, which had not been removed by the Fire Nation.

The commander's face was a wash of despair and horror, as now that it had come down to it, he had been left with no choice and no time to make even a bad one.

Appa did not need to be told "Yip, yip," and was moving through the air, albeit slowly and at a low altitude, likely because of his own hardships. Sokka lie flat on his back, letting himself believe that his ordeal was essentially over, aside from several extremely loose ends. He sat up after a moment and saw Appa had begun to circle back, not entirely towards the Fire Nation camp, but closer than Sokka wanted.

-Big guy wants to kick some butt. Can't say as I blame him, but it'll have to wait.-

He felt Azula's hand clamp down hard on his shoulder. She was behind him, near the rear of the saddle. Her breath whispered across his ear.

"It was nice getting to know you," she said and planted a dry kiss on his cheek. Sokka's body became as rigid as the bleak ice beneath the snow that ran on seemingly forever to the south. His brain scrambled to make sense of what she had done, but not for long. "And this is for cutting me."

He felt her fingernails sink into his neck as they raked backward leaving a burning bloody trail in their wake. Sokka shouted in pain and clamped a hand over his damp neck as he felt Azula's presence leave him.

Ignoring the stinging in his flesh for a moment, he turned to see that she had rolled over the edge of the saddle and down over Appa's hip. She went out of sight briefly before he saw her once more, falling. They were nowhere near as high as when the airship crashed, but Sokka did not see that as an improvement. When he saw blue jets shoot from her hands she had moved to an upright standing position so the force was slowing her fall.

Sokka winced, but he could not look away as Azula hit the ground. Even from where he was, he heard her piercing scream, yet her subsequent wails, if she was conscious enough to emit any, were lost in the snowy ether between bison and ground.

Feeling the mad urge to have Appa swoop back down and pick her up, Sokka's hand once again found his neck, and it came away stained in blood made sticky from the cold.

"Ugh, good riddance," he said and moved to take up Appa's reigns.

He steered the bison northward, and let him go at his own pace, merely wishing to be somewhere warmer. All he had on him were his boomerang and a dagger, but Sokka knew he could survive on that for now. He would have to get some supplies, perhaps from a Water Tribe village, but those thoughts were far away now, and he felt sleep creeping up on him, having sensed an opening.

Sokka sat and hung his head, feeling the weight of everything that had transpired bearing down on his shoulders. Sokka hoped Aang would at least be awake when he returned but would take not having to explain the danger he had placed Appa in as a silver lining to a dark cloud. The darkest cloud of all, however, had a round, brown face and bright blue eyes, and it swam before him now heavy with a storm.

Sokka had no idea how long he had been gone but knew it had been longer than what he'd told his sister and father to plan on. He could only hope they had the sense to stay around where they were rather than go looking for him right away, and in thinking of all this, he groaned aloud. He climbed out onto the back of Appa's neck and tugged affectionately at the bison's fur.

"How ya feelin', big guy?" he asked.

Appa responded with a hearty rumble, and Sokka sensed his speed had increased if not his altitude. The bison was tired and worn but glad to be in the air again, which relieved Sokka, as he had been loathe to nap himself if Appa was tired too.

"Glad to hear it," he said, patting the bison. "Let's go back to Aang. I'm going to take a nap."

The bison grumbled at the Avatar's name, and Sokka hoped he would keep north and avoid trouble for a few hours. His neck burned where Azula had scratched him, but he had nothing to bandage it with, as a cursory search of his coat turned up none of the healing salve they had used for Azula's leg or any bandages. His pat down did, however, reveal something rectangular and solid.

Hoplo's journal was almost tossed into the sea, but something gave Sokka pause. The journal had been the key to his and Azula's survival, and it was the last thing its owner could lay claim to having accomplished. Sokka thought he would tell someone of the creatures that dwelled under the icy mountains, but something cast doubt on that assumption.

-Azula will tell, of course,- he thought, but doubted that, even though he could not say why.

"Who would believe this anyway?" he wondered with a snort, knowing the journal was the only real proof. "What's the point?" -What if the things ever get out?- "They can't, it's too cold."

With another loud groan, he curled into a ball at the back of the saddle in his usual spot and for once rested without trying to formulate a plan. The journal, his family, the mountains, all these things would have to wait regardless. The pain in his neck had dulled, but he could still feel the spot on his cheek where her dry lips had touched him. He took off a glove to wipe his face and void the faint sensation she had left, but, after a moment's deliberation, he decided it was too cold to be gloveless and slipped it back on.

When his eyes closed, he found himself wishing that tonight there would be a full moon so that he might not feel like he missed Azula.

The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally posted on FF.Net. It was recommended I post it here, too. 
> 
> Thanks to Crazy4WritingB2 who offered to beta this story a little before Part II and made it much, much better, especially the ending. 
> 
> To those who did not know, the non-Avatar elements are all courtesy of H.P. Lovecraft. The rest was inspired by Jack London.
> 
> The sequel, "Love of Madness" is in the process of being posted. Some of it is up on FF.Net and I'll be posting at here in due time. The next chapter is that story's prologue and serves as a teaser.


	31. Prologue to "Love of Madness."

"So," Zuko said, setting down a mug of steaming tea as a servant poured Sokka a cup of the same. Zuko waited for the server to leave muted room before speaking further. "I never did get the lowdown on what happened to you and my sister in the South Pole."

Sokka was in the Fire Lord's private chamber by appointment. The snowflakes that had landed on his head and shoulders during his walk were now tiny beads of water. In his short time as ambassador to the Fire Nation, he had learned Zuko was not prone to idle social visits and so he wondered what made him so curious about that old incident now, given everything else that was happening with the Fire Nation's colonies in the Earth Kingdom.

"Well, we heard about the airship being tested over the pole, so I decided I was going to blow it up, kinda pay you guys back for what happened to Aang in Ba Sing Se, only I told everybody I was just going to scout..."

Zuko waived his hand impatiently. "I know all that, I'm just wondering how you two survived with hardly any food and in the freezing cold. Azula's leg got banged up pretty bad, too."

"Yeah, it was broke pretty good," Sokka said, wondering what Azula had told her brother about the ordeal. "We stayed in the crashed ship for a few days, tended her wound, then loaded up on supplies. We got worried there might be a Deep Cold, that's when it gets so cold no amount of furs will save you, so we decided to make for some nearby mountains rather than try and wait for rescue."

"Because you thought it was warmer near the mountains," said Zuko, smiling.

"Yeah," said Sokka, remembering how Azula had dreamed about the mountain and was convinced there was fire of some kind under it. There had been heat, but no fire. Something else had been calling to her it turned out.

"So it was warm in the caves under the mountain," Sokka continued. "We lived off mushrooms for a while and followed the cave tunnels to the other side where I built a balloon, and the rest is history."

"Where did you find the stuff to build the balloon?" asked Zuko.

-Monkey feathers...- Sokka thought, adopting an Aang-ism. -What did Azula tell him?-

He would just have to hope it was not too much. Sokka had assumed Azula thought the same as he did on the matter, that what lived under the mountains of the South Pole was best left forgotten and ignored. Giving the journal he had found on the body of the dead explorer to scholars in the Northern Water Tribe had been a risk, but he thought he had done it in such a way that would not arouse any interest in the little book. He could have burned the thing, but that seemed foolish, and keeping the loathsome object with him was equally unbearable, so he sent it back to the homeland of its owner and prayed it would be forgotten.

"I used scrap from the airship. Built a sled for it, and somehow hauled it through the caves. I was afraid of building the balloon on the one side because I thought the wind would slam us into the mountain," he said. The lie was easy to keep straight, as it had been his original plan before finding the remains of the ancient expedition.

"Azula wasn't the same after she came back," Zuko said. "Most people think she snapped when she was about to become Fire Lord, and even people close to her think it was when she lost Mai and Ty Lee's support at the Boiling Rock where she tried to kill us, remember? But I noticed something was off with her when she first came back from the South Pole."

Sokka was nodding, furrowing his brow in what he hoped looked like interest and concern. "What was different about her?" he asked.

"The same thing I suspect was different about you," Zuko said, making gooseflesh on Sokka's neck. "Granted, I didn't know you so well at the time to notice, but I see it now. You have a tendency to stare off into space when you're not talking, like you're not here. Old soldiers who've seen a lot of action get it, I'm told. It's called a Thousand Yard Stare. Azula was always sharp, like a cat about to pounce even when she was bored or lost in thought, but this new look she'd get was different. What happened to you guys down there?"

Sokka took a few moments to collect himself, trying to think of when he had been staring at nothing like Zuko described. He wanted to groan. He had been a fool to think he had escaped that place under the mountain clean, as though his simple outlook on life had offered any real protection. He remembered being glib at the time, putting the horrible revelations of Hoplo's journal and all they had seen into context for Azula, whose mind had come closer to the horror than his and cracked.

"It was...really hard," Sokka finally said. "Everyone else on the airship died. It was so cold...we had to look hard for the food, and the mountain was farther away than it looked. We didn't think anyone who came to rescue us would even be able to find us...we really thought we were going to die. I mean, we were sure of it at one point, but we kept going through the motions because there was nothing else to do. Even when things were looking up, it was all long shots, you know?"

All of this was true, and even with the weirdness left out of his tale the ordeal had been a horror. He gripped his mug of tea to steady his hands and for the first time realized he had never truly talked to anyone about that time of cold and dark. Everyone seemed to think it was just another harrowing adventure, something Sokka was used to by then, and they assumed the worst part had been all that time alone with Azula.

They could never know how her face, being the only other human face within a thousand miles, had been like the rising sun. They could never understand how her voice, being the only voice, aside from his own to be heard for days upon days, had been a buffer against howling madness. No one would ever comprehend the life-giving force that had been her fist pounding on his back, urging him to crawl forward when his body had quit on him and left him to freeze and die in a snowy wasteland.

He could never explain this to anyone, least of all to people Azula had subsequently tried to kill. As for the rest of it, they were better off not knowing, and by now it was too late to tell them. He would be called a liar and a crazy person by those who did not know him, and a betrayer by those who did.

"I guess anybody would come back from that changed," said Zuko. "I always thought she was kind of untouchable; I've been trying to get to the bottom of what's wrong with her."

"How is she by the way?" Sokka asked. He had heard rumors of all sorts, the kind people told about tyrants no longer in power.

"This stays between you and me," Zuko said, leaning over his tea. "Aside from the weird staring, she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming about things that live under the ground. The healers had to give her sleeping potions. They still do. During the day she's normal, sort of, but sometimes she says weird things or talks like our mother is in the room. I'm kind of ashamed of this, but they have to keep her in a special jacket where the sleeves tie behind her back."

Zuko was the one to look away now and Sokka, thoroughly depressed, sought to end the conversation. "Maybe...I don't know, Zuko, I wish I had some advice."

"No, it's fine. I won't say she deserves what's happened to her, but a lot of it has been from choices she made. Say, listen, the real reason I had you come here was to ask a favor."

Sokka's eyebrow went up. Zuko was not a demanding man, but neither was he the sort to ask favors of just anybody. "Uh, sure. What is it?"

"I'll understand if you don't want to do it, but like I was saying Azula's in rough shape. Mentally, I mean. Physically she's stronger than ever, and dangerous."

Zuko was not looking at him, and Sokka was already familiar with Fire Lord Zuko's new royal habit of looking at people as though trying to beam a hole in their head with his gaze. "Okay, shoot," Sokka said.

"I was thinking maybe you could go see her? Just, I don't know, say hi or something. She has no friends, is convinced everyone around her is out to get her, and she's getting worse. I asked Mai to go but she refused and told me Ty Lee would be the same way. I don't think Azula wants to see them, anyway."

-And she'll want to see me?- he almost asked, but instead nodded and looked concerned. His chest had become tight and he felt like he had been sighted by a saber-toothed moose lion. His hands would not stop shaking, so he set his mug down. "I guess," he said, feeling his cheek and neck burn.

"Thanks, Sokka. I won't forget this."

-888-

The asylum was a stone fortress not far from the sea. It was heavily guarded both from without and within and Sokka felt oddly relieved to see some people walking about the grounds and halls wearing robes and tunics rather than armor. These people were healers, according to a tall, thin woman who insisted on being called Chief Healer Bin. She was head of the asylum and received Sokka with disdainful interest, making constant references to "tribals" and tribal behaviors she found fascinating.

"I've only met one waterbender in my time here," Bin said, leading Sokka down a long hallway lined with tapestries. It was dryer and smelled much nicer than the other parts of the facility. "She was an old woman. Quite mad, actually. She'd learned to bend blood if you can believe it."

Sokka decided he had enough problems without wondering what had become of the bloodbender and so he did not ask. He also did not wish to hear Bin speak if he did not have to. "Aside from Fire Lord Zuko, Princess Azula gets no visitors," said Bin. "I've been led to believe you played a key role in some traumatic event the princess experienced, yes?"

"Yep, that's me," Sokka said.

"I must say I was against you seeing her as you're far more apt to trigger an episode rather than sooth her fevered mind, but it is the Fire Lord's will."

"Yeah, that's great," Sokka said. "Zuko, er, the Fire Lord mentioned she sometimes screams about things that live under the ground? What's that about?"

"Well, from what we've pieced together, after the airship incident she spent some time in a cave system beneath the ground...with you. Take the trauma of that entire incident and throw in a strange, er, person, who likely has different mannerism and customs than what she's used to, and you get rants about 'the crawling chaos' and the 'movers underground.'"

"Ah. My fault, then. Gotchya," said Sokka, thinking he would not mind taking this woman on a tour of the place he and Azula had been.

They came to Azula's cell, which was dark save for some light near the ceiling, reflected in through mirrors. The walls were stone, and the bed she had was piled high with flame-resistant leathers rather than cotton or straw. Azula herself was the last thing he noticed, for she seemed quite small sitting cross-legged on the floor in a white coat fitted with straps and with long sleeves that tied around her back. "Princess, you have a visitor," said Bin.

"Zuzu, back so soon?" Azula said, her voice sharp and cruel.

"Hi, Azula," said Sokka.

There was a long moment of silence, then Azula turned just enough to fix one amber eye on Sokka, as though she were afraid of what she might see. Her eye flickered between him and Bin, and he could see she was trembling. "Can, uh, you give us a minute?" asked Sokka. "Fire Lord's orders," he added after she scowled.

"Be sure to scream if she breathes fire onto you," said Bin, curtly. "I'll be nearby."

"You," she said when Bin was gone. "Have you come to silence me?"

"No," Sokka said. "Zuko said you were having a rough time and he thought seeing me might help. If he was wrong, say so and I'll go."

She stood and let her hair fall away from her sunken eyes like curtains. Her bare feet made soft padding sounds on the stone while the manacles she wore rattled and clinked. Her hair, once beetle black and shining, was bedraggled and hung in front of her face. She came to the bars and he paid special attention to her shallow breathing, for any deep intake of breath would herald a fire attack.

"Are you real?" she asked.

He tapped the bars with his hand above her head, stopping short of touching her. "Yeah. I didn't tell anyone about what happened under the mountain. I should have, I'm sorry. I'll tell Zuko when I leave and something can get done about all this. I mean, you're nuts, but not nuts like they think you are..." his voice trailed off as her face twisted into a scowl.

"Keep your mouth shut," she hissed. "The worst thing that can happen is if people found out about Them."

"What do you mean?"

"Fool, haven't you been dreaming?"

"No. I mean, yeah, but not about any of that stuff. Not lately."

"Of course, your mind is denser, mine is more advanced, closer to their level. That's why they've singled me out above all others for destruction."

"You're thousands of miles away from them," he said. "Anything you've got bothering you is just thoughts you carried over. They can't hurt you or anybody else."

She cackled and staggered back from him, making his body tense and prepare to dodge a jet of flames but none came. "You fool! You complete, utter fool!" she nearly shrieked. "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming! Do you know what that means!?"

He shook his head, and repeated the words she had spoken, knowing her encounter with one of the monsters at the South Pole had left her knowing things she should not. She staggered back to the bars, hunched over like a cripple. Despite the sallow, sunken face she sported not all of her beauty had departed her and it stirred pity in his heart.

"Neither do I," she said, her face collapsing and eyes growing watery. "I hear it when I sleep. I thought it was coming up from the ground, but it's not, it's coming up from the sea, over the waves. I can hear it at night. Tell me you can hear it, too, Sokka, tell me it's not just me."

She sunk to her knees, and Sokka regretted coming here. He knelt, too, wary of her. "You said it's better no one knows. Why?" he asked.

"Because people would go looking," she said. "I know how people are, I know. People would go looking and things would be stirred up, more than they've been stirred already, by us. Those dabbling dead fools we found, those were the beginning, but none made it back alive and so they did not get curious. Now they're curious, Sokka, and as much as I'd like to see the world pay for what's it's done to me...I just want Them to forget about me and leave me alone."

She had called him by his name more times than ever before, he noted. "Okay, I'll keep quiet," he said. "But I can't leave you like this."

Azula picked her head up slowly to look up at him. She laughed, then got to her feet. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Like I told you, dead Cthulhu waits and he'll either stop calling to me or he'll rise up from the sea and call to everyone! One way or another, my suffering ends. It was good to see you again, Water Tribe boy, now away with you before I set you ablaze."

He cocked his head to the side and stood his ground, not wanting to leave without further explanation, given that he knew what she was saying was not entirely madness. The words did not come, however, and he left her with her back turned to him in her gloomy cell.

"Well, were you able to cure her?" asked Bin who had been standing in the hall outside. She was looking down her nose at him with a sour smirk on her lips.

"I don't think she likes being so close to the sea," Sokka said, doubting anything he said was registering. He walked ahead of Bin, who he could feel smirking at his back, and showed himself out.

To be continued...


End file.
